


DADA

by frustratedFreeboota



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Ableist Language, Alt-Power Taylor Hebert, Alternate Universe - Crack, Coffee Shops, Dadaism, Loss of Identity, Nazis, Nonbinary Character, POV Queer Character, Superheroes, Supervillains, Trans Character, Transphobia, stations of canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:15:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 94
Words: 108,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27616831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frustratedFreeboota/pseuds/frustratedFreeboota
Summary: Brockton Bay is a city in peril, plagued by zombie boats and armed fascist goons. Only one muppet can save it, and she's been waiting to use her powers for three months now. Clad in papier mache, Taylor Hebert will use her very powerful powers to do Taylorly things to all the villains. And all the heroes too. She's going to be the best bad guy she can be. And if Brian can take his eyes off Alec for five seconds, well that'd be pretty nice too.An understanding of both Worm and of the fanfiction scene for Worm is likely needed to enjoy this fanfic. Spoilers for the entirety of Worm.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 26





	1. Generic 1.1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EtchJetty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EtchJetty/gifts), [CPericardium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CPericardium/gifts), [Nashoid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nashoid/gifts).



> Author's Author's Notes Notes
> 
> This work originally ran from somewhere in 2017 to somewhere in 2017 for all of one arc. For posterity's sake, the original ending where I gave up and posted all the notes I had for subsequent arcs will be preserved. At the time I had a beard and now I don't have a beard, but I do have a bosom.
> 
> DADA is a mess of a fic that tells its own story ish within the bounds of the stations of canon, a concept that for a while was all the rage in Worm fanfic. You gave Taylor a new power and she would beat up Lung, Bakuda, and Leviathan, and then die. Or like, the fic would die. Usually that was where the story stopped. So this was originally conceived as a comedy that just made jokes while following that path laid out for it. It died within an arc, and Peri made me a haunting picture that served as an epitaph for the whole thing. Pericardium is a cool author whose work is amazing and funny and sad when it wants to be.
> 
> Anyway, two years later, someone cool got me thinking about it again. EtchJetty did a rather lovely show called Emboar and had me on to talk about my fanfics, and that was really cool. I decided to give it another go, with a new endgame for the story to work towards, ironically based on the story that failed to materialise in the background of the review thread that kinda inspired Jetty's show! 
> 
> Anyway, most of my new ideas are stuff I chat about with my esteemed partner, the Nash, so they get a mention here too. :33 
> 
> Anyway, here it is! Hope you enjoy this weird comedy. Remember to kill the geraniums on the way out, and that like, it is deliberately and undeliberately putting on a few of a lot of the dressings of fanfic.

_Brief note from the author. I prefer them to boxers._

Class was over in five minutes and all I could think was one k words is too long for an introductory chapter.

I was looking forward to the point when Mr. G's world issues class would finally discuss capes, considering that almost every problem anyone ever faced in Brockton Bay could be traced back to a parahuman. Possibly even bullying? No. That was ridiculous.

He was clearly animated, not your high quality golden age Disney work, but not really that low quality CG that had taken over these days. He was the sort of teacher that wore gold chains into class, and ended a little early so he could chat up the popular girls. He struck me as the sort of man that might have never left Winslow after graduation, that they might have just found him lurking in a classroom at the start of the next term and handed him a diploma.

It was class and I was Taylor Hebert. Mr. G sat at his desk and smiled. The rest of the class smiled back. Madison Clements emptied a container of pencil shavings onto my head, and then ceased to exist.

3 rows to the left of the row to my right, and 4 seats behind the seat two seats in front of me, Madison was talking to her friends. It was the only thing that sustained her existence. With every word, she seemed to grow a little more tangible, forcing herself into relevance. She saw me looking and desperately stared into my eyes.

"Let me rap here." Mr G said.

"We got h-work for the weekend but I'm feelin kinda chill

So don't work too hard I aint gonna be no pill

Think bout dem capes out in Brockton and the shit they do

That helps to impact, the world around you."

"Oh and uh, I'll buy the winner some snacks."

I just put my books away and kept quiet.

Madison was talking to her friends. She was popular, but in that "Oh yeah, Madison. Madison. Um. Which Mad- oh yeah. Clements. Yeah. I met her. Once..." kind of way.

I sequed into the toilet, pita wrap in one hand, an Alexandria autobiography in the other. I'd had a sneaking suspicion that it was all made up ever since I'd seen the title of the first chapter. "My Totally Real Trigger Event." That and Alexandria had her fingers crossed in the photo on the front cover.

The door to the bathroom banged open. And then shut. And then open again.

There was a knock on the door of my stall.

"Who is it?" I called out, hesitantly.

"Candygram."

I stood up, and moved for the door. They were holding it shut from the other side.

"Its pull."

The pressure on the other side of the door abated, and I opened it.

Madison and Sophia stood there, a bottle in each hand.

"Sorry. No solicitors."

I closed the door, and sat back down.

Chapter two. "How I met Rebecca Costa Brown, and what a nice woman she is"

There was a sound above me. I looked up to be met by a splash of stinging liquid. Cranberry juice. Carbonated cranberry juice.

I looked up again, only to get splashed in the face. I rubbed my eyes.

And looked up again. Madison waved at me. I waved back. She splashed me in the face with grape juice.

The door swung open, and I glared at the three girls. I kept silent and moved to collect my backpack.

Pulling the straps around my shoulders, I turned around. Madison had vanished. The other two stared at the empty space where she had been standing, and then walked off.

I pulled my glasses off and realised that without them, I could not actually see the streaks on the glasses.

An articulate stream of consciousness escaped my narration, and I kicked a plastic bucket that sat beneath the sink.

The self awareness at the edge of my mind was getting worse. My hands shook as I bent over and leaned in, pressing my face against the glass. The surface rippled a little. This wasn't real. Not wholly real. And I could affect it as much as it wasn't described. I opened my eyes. I still couldn't see anything without my glasses, even though it was only logical that I should have put them back on.

It would be easy to just go Lawnmower Man on the school. Show the trio just what subjective reality could do.

I was all too aware that I'd be publicly exposed and then proceed to negotiate my way out of the room, defeat a villain or two, regret my actions, cut all ties, surrender to the authorities, get locked up, get interrogated by my childhood hero, kill my childhood hero, and then be invited in anyway... if I attacked my fellow students. There were three teams of superheroes and question mark solo heroes in the city, but I didn't really care because to be honest their track record was kind of flat. Uber and Leet were still on the streets. UBER AND LEET.

The thought of my dad seeing me on the news, his disappointment, his shame, his inept rage?

Humiliation and trembling were good enough reasons to take the afternoon off, so I told the nurse that I'd had my property defiled and my last safe place utterly violated. She said she knew the feeling.

I was going to be a ~~supervillain~~ ~~villain~~ ~~antihero~~ ~~antivillain~~ superhero.

That was the goal that helped me calm myself down after feeling like I wanted to crush people's heads. The kind of dream that a lot more people should aspire too. It made it much easier to ignore the fact that I was being psychologically tortured by a girl who used to be my best friend.


	2. 1.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor dons her costume for the first time.

My thoughts were on Emma on the ride home, because apparently the jerk drawing the speech bubbles couldn't tell which character was meant to be thinking. For an outside observer, it's easy to trivialize the importance of proper layout in a semi comic book format, but simple things like that can really confuse the readers.  
  
So when I got back from nature camp just a week before high school started to find out that she wasn't talking to me, I was confused by the ambiguity of that sentence. Had I really returned from nature camp for the purpose of finding out that she wasn't talking to me, or had I returned, only to find out that she wasn't talking to me?  
  
Unwilling to dwell on grammatical errors, deliberate or unintentional, I turned my attention to my backpack, digging through to check that its contents were clean. They were. I'd only had juice thrown in my face after all. Repeatedly. I retrieved the black and white and black notebook. The corners of the paper, when flicked, created a little animation of Emma running around with her arms flailing in the air. Two hundred whole pages of miniscule doodles. Safe. It also contained the notes for my hero career. And my day planner.  
  
Finish Art Project? Check.  
  
Offscreen power testing? Check.  
  
Embarrassed at school? Check.  
  
Decide to go on patrol?  
  
Hmm. I thought about it for a little while. And then gave it a check.  
  
The bus ride back was relatively peaceful. I flipped my notepad over to the other side, and watched as a doodle of Sophia stepped in gum and then melted into a puddle when she couldn't get it off.  
  
Sophia and Emma. Emma and Sophia. Emphia? Barhess? They'd been together since I'd gotten back from nature camp, just a week before high school started. And since then, for some reason they'd created a campaign of bullying so vicious and so orchestrated that one could imagine the two beating me with conductor's batons. Oh, and there was a third one or... I could never remember. She probably wasn't important.  
  
The bus stopped roughly a block away from my house, and after a short walk back I let myself into the house, and removed my shoes so as not to dirty the carpet, and my backpack so that I wouldn't have to carry it.  
  
Once inside the house, I moved upstairs to take my shower. Standing in the tub, water running down, damp clothes hanging tight on my frame like a scarecrow in a storm, I thought about killing the... trio? No. There were definitely only two of them. I thought about killing the duo.  
  
It was a serious thought. I was humiliated, frustrated, and I always had a weapon available. Fists were good like that. Except most people don't just stand still while you beat someone to death.  
  
Hmm. Well. If I couldn't beat them to death, I could probably beat up random strangers under the guise of the defense of justice. Brockton Bay had something like, any number of solo heroes in the city, so it couldn't be that hard. Honestly, I had no idea why I hadn't gone out and patrolled the streets sooner. Ah wait, the three month waiting period on my powers. Should be done in about... a day or two? Today was Friday, I could buy a utility belt on Saturday, give the costume a try out on Sunday. Yeah. Plenty of preparation time to go out there and make a difference while working out the frustration and impotence I felt every single minute of my life at school.  
  
I turned the shower off, and stepped out in my sodden clothes, making my way downstairs. The house was old. The basement had never been used. Partly because a house intended for three was housing two.  
  
There, I found my costume.  
  
Hidden in a box within a box of women's magazines, behind a box of old toys, behind the furnace, in a boarded up coal shute, with another box filled with fashion magazines wedged in front of the coal shute.  
  
I wasn't taking any chances.  
  
Three months minus two days ago I had started to prepare for my goal. I had practiced speeches and internal conflict. On the second week after discovering my powers, I had realized that most capes had costumes. It should have come to me sooner, but honestly I was still a little traumatized. Most capes had colorful, elaborate costumes that symbolized who they were, what they stood for, and what their powers were. I had had an epiphany. And so, with every ounce of the arts and crafts knowledge I had, I had crafted my costume.  
  
Baggy clothes to conceal my awkward frame, and try to keep people from noticing me. Darker colors to mute my outline, helping me to blend into the shadows and keep people from noticing me. Street clothes, so that people would be unable to tell if I was a cape from a distance. The brown hooded sweatshirt would be worn over a green t-shirt, and accompanied by my mask.  
  
It wasn't great looking, not yet. The papier mache had settled into a dirty yellow gray brown before I'd applied the first layer of flesh colored paint. The perfect image to project onto the world. A thin lipped, wide, expressive mouth. Large eyes, two black rings around them that were joined by a line between them, and two more lines that trailed back behind my ears.  
  
I'd realized earlier that I was procrastinatinating. I still had Mister G's homework assignment to complete, and I'd have to finish that if I wanted to be able to go out this weekend.


	3. Generic 1.34

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor engages an angry azian man and his gang of Lung Goons.

My training regime had prepared me for this. A run every morning, every other afternoon, mid day every third Saturday. And a light jog at brunch time on public holidays.

In the process, I had a pretty good idea of the Boardwalk.

So I immediately headed for the section of the city full of gang violence and crack whores.

I crossed the line between the nicest part of the town, and the black void of murder and insanity held at bay by the chalk line someone had been kind enough to paint to help mark the edge of THE DOCKS. The distance between the two was smaller than you'd think, the line was only about an inch thick.

THE BOARDWALK was where tourists came, a collection of businesses that ran the entire length of Brockton Bay's beachfront. It gave an excellent view of the headquarters for the local Protectorate headquarters, a floating base of operations, armed with a missile system, a force field dome, and a helipad for Protectorate Helicopters, each sold separately. The fact that it was in the middle of the bay probably had something to do with their appalling response time.

If you headed west, away from the boardwalk and from the water, you entered an area called THE DOCKS, that sadly due to its distance from the water, contained no docks. When business had dried up, a whole lot of people had suddenly found themselves out of work, excluding my dad, whose job of finding work for the dockworkers had subsequently become very busy.

This had helped contribute to the growing supervillain population, taking root here due to the damp conditions and humid climate that helped them to grow. They were an invasive species, and had quickly forced out many indigenous flora that were unable to compete.

The extremely good mood lighting in the area had helped me, the street was otherwise unlit, my ability to see depending on the carrots in my diet, and the silvery light of the ominous luminous glowing orb in the sky, the moon after it had been subsumed.

I spotted their boss easily enough. Big, exactly six feet in height like most people with super strength ended up. He wasn't wearing a shirt, despite the chill. He wasn’t wearing pants, despite the chill. I thanked god that he was still wearing his boxers, despite the chill. Tattoos covered him from head to toe, each depicting eastern mythological creatures that flew and had whiskers and scales. These strange beasts were accompanied by writing. On one hand, "Nogard A Ma I", and on the other, "Naisa Won Era Uoy".

He called himself Lung, because he breathed fire. And he had successfully gone toe to toe with entire teams of heroes without having his eyes cut out, or his genitalia rotting off, both the leading forms of injury sustained in the course of the average parahuman conflict. The news had told us that the longer he fought, the more he gradually changed, gaining scales, superhuman healing, superhuman strength, hotter fire, a lengthened neck, a set of sharpened talons, and eventually wings. As for what he was turning into, I had no idea.

I decided to find a better vantage point to balance out my violent recklessness and catlike curiosity. Halfway down an alley, I decided I needed to have a look on some rooftops to make my aimless wandering and casual observations a little more varied. I found the fire escape leading up the top of a building. Good. A way up. I jumped to the roof and landed softly.

From there, I walked to the edge, and perched so that it would scare the crap out of them if lightning illuminated my gargoyle like posture. Lung was still talking. Being atop a two story building made it hard to understand them, but thankfully the written medium would help me understand their words anyway.

"We're going after the Undersiders. Look, they're all capes, so if you see the children, just shoot..."

They were going to kill capes? But, I was a cape!

I would have to do this quickly, and so I jumped into action, landing in that three point hero pose, except my fist landed on the head of one of Lung's minions, and so did my feet. Three of his men down, Lung stared at me in awe, hidden behind the silver of his pointed, sharp fanged, scaled mask. As did the remaining twenty five armed gang members. Lung started to transform.

I unjumped out of action, returning back to the rooftop where the shadows would quite clearly hide me.

Lung continued to stare at my hidden silhouette. His henchmen shook their heads in disbelief, staring around to try and locate where the mysterious parahuman had disappeared to. Lung pointed at the rooftop that I had jumped to. Ah. He must have had enhanced hearing to know that I was hiding on this rooftop. The rest of his henchmen shook their heads. They clearly couldn't see anything in the dark of the night.

You don't properly appreciate superhuman agility until you see an Asian man covered in scales and tattoos of scaled creatures leap two stories vertically, and the length of a street horizontally.

As he crested the edge, scales erupting across his body, I shot him in the eyes with pepper spray.

"My eyes. I needed those to see." Lung sighed.

I kicked him in the jaw.

Lung continued to cling to the edge of the rooftop. He tapped a claw gently against the ledge, waiting for my follow up.

Alas, my final attack was hopeless. In my extensive months of power testing, not once had I encountered nor prepared for an opponent strong enough to withstand the devastating influence of having pepper spray in their eyes, and a boot on their chin.

I withdrew my foot. Lung stopped tapping.


	4. Generic 1.5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor meets with the Undersiders, a local gang of troubled youths with dark secrets.

With no warning a massive shape the size of a van landed atop Lung.  
  
"Ow." Lung said.  
  
He picked up the liger by the scruff of its neck. A second, mini van sized creature charged him, and he let go of the roof to grab at that creature. Predictably, doing so caused him to fall.  
  
I peered over the edge. How ironic. Lung, a person that could fly, had fallen.  
  
I stood aware, shaking. Of course. There was probably a bunch of people standing right behind me.  
  
I turned around.  
  
Noone. Good.  
  
"You really saved us a lot of trouble there."  
  
I nearly leapt out of my costume. Slowly, I turned around to face the ledge. Two large paws had taken up Lung's perch, and a selection of costumed individuals stood atop the pickup truck sized creature.  
  
The tallest one approached me, while the rest also remained in roughly my vicinity, angled in my general direction, but only to look down at Lung's crushed form. He had had a mini van sized creature and a van sized creature fall on top of him. Collectively, that was almost as dangerous as being crushed by a camper van sized creature.  
  
"You really saved us a lot of trouble. The rest of those guards are still wandering around. We haven't even had to fight them," he told me. His voice was as deep as the ocean, and as masculine as a man that worked on the ocean. Muffled only slightly by the black helmet he wore. He was dressed in black motorcycle leathers, and black shoes. I'd have thought he might just be into motocross, were it not for the stylised skull that his visor had been shaped into. The skull was also black.  
  
What about the van sized creatures? I wondered. A few scattered gunshots informed me that yes, they had spotted the van sized creatures.  
  
"Or not. Um. Introductions. The girl grinning like a red furred vermin is Tattletale. I am Grue. The girl with the van sized creatures is Hellhound. But we call her a bitch. Lastly, we have Regent. He really doesn't care what we call him."  
  
Regent replied. He was wearing a white mask, with a white coronet in his curls, a ruffled white shirt tucked into skintight white leggings tucked into knee high white boots.  
  
"Yes, cleaning this is a bitch." Regent said, preempting the first question that came to my mind.  
  
"Huh?" Hellhound said. She was in a costume almost as impressive as mine. A plaid skirt, army boots, a torn up tank top. And a really scary dog mask and collar.  
  
"Are you ok?" Grue asked me. His costume was thick, but I could still make out an almost statuesque build. He carried himself like a professional, refusing to put himself down. I wondered what he must look like underneath all the black, what sort of shapely form could fill out-  
  
"The reason she isn't introducing herself isn't because she's hurt, it's because she's too busy staring at you." Tattletale interjected.  
  
"Am not." I whispered, staring at the man in the leather.  
  
The one in the purple skintight suit looked at me. She grinned ~~caninely~~ ~~a catlike grin~~ ~~felinely~~ ~~like a fox. Just, say she grinned like a fox you unimaginative~~ vulpinely.  
  
I scowled at the thought of the word, reached out, and removed the fox from where it was sat on her face to reveal the far less impressive purple domino mask.  
  
The purple skintight suited woman grinned, and held her hands out. I gave her her pet back, and this time it wound itself about her neck.  
  
The one in the skull mask nodded in agreement.  
  
What could this mean?  
  
"She has powers. Like. Awesome powers. I'd tell you more, but I just got a headache."  
  
"Have you overused your powers?" I asked.  
  
"No," she said, licking her ice cream cone. "Just eating a little fast."  
  
I frowned. Something wasn't making sense here. Then it hit me.  
  
"Urban foxes are not native to Brockton Bay."  
  
The purple suited woman looked down in horror at the empty space around her neck. I could practically taste the italics.  
  
_Her power is like, y'know. Pretty good. Like, awesome. A plus. Hey, um, while QA is here mind asking her if I can get a raise next cycle?_  
  
"Hey, kiddo," Tattletale said to me, sitting just behind Hellhound on their van sized creature, and getting more than a little indelicate with where she was holding on. "What's your name?"  
  
I stared. Hmm. Three whole months. Had I actually just, sat down at any point and thought of one? Little, brainstorm diagram kind of deal.  
  
"No." I said.  
  
"Well Kiddo, a cape is going to show up in less than a minute amount of time. Take my advice. Don't talk to him. He's a complete and total jerk."  
  
With that, the van sized creatures leapt over my head. One of them hit the fire escape on the way down with a heavy clang, and a stream of cuss words from Grue.  
  
"&*£!ing son of a teammate."  
  
Another heavy clang as it pulled itself free, an angry scraping as it dragged the metal along the side of the building for a bit, and then a thud as it landed.  
  
When I realised what had happened, I could have laughed. Those were capes. Lung was going to kill capes. But they were villains, so it would've been morally acceptable to just sit back and let them kill each other. Wow. Way to waste my first night.


	5. Generic 1.6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor speaks with a mechanical figure whose presence forces her to confront the role she sees herself adopting.

I heard the roar of the motorcycle as it approached. The twenty to thirty twenty-to-thirty something henchmen still bustling about on the street below started to panic.

About five to ten of them got run over on his first pass. Another one was caught as he started to reverse into a parking space. Another was hit in the head as he retrieved his swordy stick.

Oh my god. This was Armsmaster. A hero! His signature weapon was his spear-with-an-axe-head-on-the-end, basically a halberd that he'd crammed full of every gadget he could conceivably need, and a few that he most likely didn't.

The largest superhero organization in the world was the Protectorate, thanks in part to their revolutionary idea of not persecuting people with superpowers even when they were saving your life from far more dangerous people. It spanned Canada and the United States of America, with talks about continuing to exclude Mexico going so far as to redefine what "North America" actually meant. They set themselves up in every city with a sizeable population of villains, every cape city, including Cape Girardeau and Cape Coral. Armsmaster's team was officially the Protectorate East North East, and he had managed to justify the expenditure of a force field shrouded floating island fortress.

Armsmaster shot Lung with a dart. Then prodded him with his swordy stick. Then he shot him in his crotch with another dart. And then prodded him. Armsmaster shrugged his shoulders, and shot another three darts into Lung's mystic orbs.

He shot something at the rooftop, and nearly flew upwards until he was hanging from the ledge, his pointed stick having retracted.

"Beep." He called out, looking up at where I stood above the ledge. Below him, Lung's remaining henchmen scratched their heads and looked around for where he had vanished to. A few started to walk off.

"I'm a cape." I said.

"Beep boop."

"NO! I'm not a villain!"

"Bop."

"Well I'd like to see you make a better one on my allowance."

He tilted his head as he hung from the ledge. "Beep boop."

It was like Michael Jordan telling me I sucked at baseball.

"Yeah well you get to cheat at stuff like that. I get that it looks crap."

I was beginning to see why Tattletale had told me to ignore him. As he stepped closer I could make out the symbol on his chest, a man's head with immaculate facial hair. I owned underwear with that symbol on them. I was wearing them over the top of my trousers too, since I was a cape. The awkwardly placed beard had gotten the line discontinued. His hair looked a little more... metallic.... in person.

"TRUTH DETECTED." It was definitely a statement. "DO YOU REQUIRE MEDICAL AID?"

"No."

"Boop beep."

"I haven't decided on a name yet."

He shrugged, his shoulders whirring with the motion.

"I almost died."

He shrugged, his shoulders whirring with the motion.

Then he froze, his head tilted back and his mouth half open.

"That is why we have the Ward program."

His voice was suddenly pleasant but strangely inflected. He spoke again, his voice a perfect impersonation of the local director of the Parahuman Response Team East East North.

"The Ward program is the under-eighteen subdivision of the Protectorate. Brockton Bay has its own team of Wards, the Wards North East East. Join the Wards, escape the stresses of high school and enter a world of adult insight and schedules!"

"Did you get Lung?" I asked, trying to change the subject. I was pretty sure he was programmed to try and recruit people like me to the Wards or Protectorate in order to promote the Cape agenda.

"DING."

"Good. I'll feel like I got something done today."

"FALSEHOOD DETECTED."

I frowned. "This week?"

"FALSEHOOD DETECTED."

"Ok fine, I'll feel like I accomplished something for once in my miserable, tormented life you emotionally stunted blue tin can!"

"TRUTH DETECTED."

"At least he'll finally stay behind bars." I muttered under my breath.

"FALSEHOOD DETECTED."

Great. That sounded fun. Let's see. Well. He hadn't seemed that furious with me today. Mostly lightly annoyed. I should be good as long as nothing too serious happened to him. And I suppose that, in the worst case, having a cape that single offhandedly took on the Protectorate, the Brockton Bay Brigade, the Wards, Empire Eight hundred and Eighty Eight, the rest of the ABBA, the Merchants, and an angry Director Piggot in a single fight as my nemesis might be a pretty cool addition to my resume. A lot of cred.

"BOOP. BEEP BOP."

I was caught off guard. I hadn't exactly done much damage to Lung, but the other capes had run off, so I clearly had first dibs on whatever cash he was carrying.

"But I did all the work?"

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-"

I held my hands over my ears, desperate to block out the noise. A stuttering static shriek, a computer in its death throws or birthing cries as a connection established itself.

"Fine, you can take the credit!"

Armsmaster leapt back down to street level, flattening the only member of ABBA, the Aziatic Brotherhood of Brother Azianz, that hadn't fled or been run over. He reached down, his feet still perched atop the red and green clothed man, opened Lung's wallet, and took the credit. And his gym membership card too. Armsmaster then folded his polearm and attached it to his bike.

Slinging one foot over the top and then the other, pulling back to raise a wheel into the air to pivot on the single point of contact with the street, he drove off, the front wheel still suspended.

It was very much past my bedtime. I made my way to the ladder at the edge of the roof, and then jumped down.


	6. Enter Lewd 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor's father knows nothing of what is happening to his daughter, just as we know nothing of the world in which they both live.

"Scion, the first of the confirmed parahumans. He appeared, floating above the ocean, completely nude, completely gold, and with the world's second greatest beard.

We don't know long he was planning on just standing around there, showing off. Hands on his hips, torso leaning back. His expression unchanging, witnesses reporting that he looked extremely smug.

The people who were there that day described him as stiff, lacking response to their touch. And, in the words of the last man to reach out to him that day, "Absolutely Yuge."

He would reappear countless times in the following years, having finally stuck some damn clothes on. His expression however, remains very, very smug.

The second of the confirmed parahumans was of course, Scion's lord and master, our immortal emperor Kevin Norton, he whom appeases, he who controls our golden savior. Bravely steering him towards disaster after disaster, and far far away from the foreign influences of the United Kingdom, the only country to retain its nuclear weapons. Though Scion's childlike mind is still an enigma, our immortal emperor Kevin Norton has made his feelings very clear on the importance of protecting humanity, stopping people from going too far with their powers, and rescuing cats."

"Praise be to our immortal emperor Kevin Norton." Danny whispered unthinkingly.

"Scion has been known to speak once in these 30 years, to a Russian hooker in a bar in Alextrovosk, introducing himself when she asked him "Kto the vuck are vy supposed to be?"

His response? Zion. Our immortal emperor Kevin Norton has since confirmed that Scion was drunk at the time, and merely slurred.

Just five years after Scion's first public appearance, everyone else decided to come forward in a display of solidarity, and shared desire to cash in on how popular powers were going to be. The Golden age of Parahumans was short lived, many discovering sadly, that powers were not just a fad, and that we'd be stuck with the damn things for thirty years.

The Golden Age of superheroes, and the loss of the super prefix for the far more succinct heroes, is a sad story. When hero Vikare stepped in to stop a football riot that had erupted at a basketball game due to a tragic misunderstanding, when he failed to discover that a hooligan in the crowd was carrying his greatest weakness. That man had brought with him a pointed stick. The death of Vikare to so simple a weapon, when even the most advanced of clubs were unable to defeat his rubber armour, came as a shock. Many people felt the illusion of superheroes was a lie, convinced by the harsh reality of both Vikare's mortality, and that cult of nine homeless superpowered mass murderers that had shown up the week before. Yes, between the tragic passing of Vikare, and the two hundred men, women and children that had been tortured to death or granted eternal life by King and his "Nine chaps from the Slaughterhouse", many people were willing to push for increased government registration, foremost among them a young Rebecca "Not a Parahuman" Costa Brown."

The screen turned to black, the remote falling to the ground from where it had collided with the on button. Danny sat back down and tugged on the fishing line the remote was attached to.

Earlier tonight, he had heard a Twig snap outside. It was scary. Now he couldn't get back to sleep. He would have told Taylor about the Twig, but he didn't want to scare her too.

Danny could hear a creaking door. Clearly, Taylor was awake. He would ask her about the Twig. As he went to leave his room, Danny was stopped by the smell of jam on toast. It demanded that he return to his bed. That was a good thing too, because Danny was unsure about connecting with his daughter. She seemed a lot odder these days. Then again. Lots of things were seeming odder. For example, just yesterday two of his coworkers had joined Uber and Leet as henchmen. UBER AND LEET. Crazy days, he muttered to himself. He'd confront her in the morning, and ask her if she liked geraniums.

Danny dreamed of four eyed monsters that rose from the sea to destroy mankind.


	7. Arc Everything but The Kitchen Sink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the original version of DADA is spoiled for everyone.

Oh look what just fell off the truck why its the notes for the next 27 arcs oh well what a shame guess I won't be able to write them.

999 999 999

Insensate 2.1

I woke to the muffled sound of the radio in the bathroom. We'd tied it up weeks ago so that we wouldn't have to hear it scream.

"This is an amicable conversation that we are having."

"Indeed."

"Recently, two gentlemen working for the Dockworker's Association found themselves seeking embloyment under the supervillain duo known as Over and Elite."

"Indeed?"

"Yes, you heard me correctly. OVER AND ELITE."

"Ridiculous."

"Additionally, I believe I detected a presence entering this house at night. I believe it might have been a Twig."

"Father, there is no such thing as Twig. Surely if there was, its fandom would have become vehement and wide, for steampunk is quite the big deal. Nay, I believe the sound to have been myself, entering the house at an ungainly hour, for the purposes of recreational jogging."

"Forgive me my incredulity, but I am rather doubtful of the safety of jogging at such an hour, not in a city as renowned for its less than lawful citizenry."

"I had my pepper spray."

"Oh. Well, that's a little better."

"I'm a parahuman."

I bent the spoon in half.

He sighed and walked away from the table.

"Don't worry Taylor, its just weak silverware. You don't have superstrength."

I was about to comment on my ability to have done so without the use of either of my hands, but I decided to let the point slide.

Interlude 2

She had an Alexandria package, delivered by Alexandria herself. Superhuman strength. Superhuman durability. Andflight. And, she thought, her vision at the man somewhat obstructed, the most common superpower.

"Aaaaaamy."

"Yes."

"I was taking a flight through the city, saving this poor woman, you know, the one I got you to heal earlier."

"Oh yes, her."

"When all of a sudden, I happen upon a cueball headed white supremacist."

"Oh?"

"And I might have broken his spine."

"Victoria."

"Yes Amy?"

"Why me?"

"Because you're the best sister ever, and the only healer in the city."

"Lung, Aegis,"

"The best healer that heals other people."

"Victoria."

"Yes Amy."

"Please tell me this is the last time."

3

Interlude 3 -

"We'll stick her with a dumb name. Like Browbeat!"

"Yeah that sounds hilarious."

At the back of the room, the latest recruit to the wards cried.

4

5

Kayden shook her head.

"You think you can win back my loyalty with your empty words and your big glowly lamps and your handsome looks and your promises of changing this city into a better place for my child to grow up? Well you're right!"

"FINE!"

"Fine."

"Shake on it?"

"I WILL!"

"OKAY."

"I wish we'd teamed up again sooner!"

Outside the doors a bodyguard chuntered to himself. It was like they were married again.

6

"OH NO. SHE APPEARS TO HAVE SLIPPED HER RESTRAINTS. DEPLOYING ADDITIONAL CLAWS."

A number of similarly limp limbs dropped from the roof of the building, dangling in a line of non-obstructions, all the way from where Paige stood by the hole, to a tiny door at the other end of the room. Paige turned around. There was an EXIT sign, right next to a fire alarm. Paige took a step towards the exit. The giant screen's face frowned at her and started tutting.

Paige followed the deactivated claws to the other door.

A small sign, in tiny font, marked it as "The Bauman Parahuman Containment Facility."

Behind the door, was a large woodland space. Trees. A sunroof over the enclosure. A small cabin. There was even a swimming pool. Around which three muscular men were sunbathing. One tossed his long hair back, droplets of water catching the bright sunlight. He caught her eyes, and tossed a towel in Paige's direction.

"Hello. We're Ingenue's victims."

Her gaze lingered on their shirtless bodies.

"We've been locked up here for so long. It's been years, and we still haven't gotten over how manipulative she was."

"We just need someone who cares for us, really."

The door closed behind Paige Maccabee.

"LUNG!"

"BAKUDA!"

"I'll blow us both up!"

"No thanks."

"Oh. Don't you want to kill me?"

"No. I want you to build me something. I need. A bath bomb."

7.Something

That was Dinah Alcott!

And?

And she was kidnapped by Coil.

And?

Tattletale sighed, slumping. Her back reach the ground, and she continued to slump, oozing towards me.

"Coil kidnapped Dinah the day of the bank robbery."

"And?"

"And that makes this kind of our fault."

"Oh."

"But I don't care, and neither does Brian."

"What about Rachel?"

"Dinah isn't a dog."

"What about Alec?"

"What about Alec?" I shouted, shaking her by her shoulders. "Alec doesn't care about anything. Alec just is."

"Hey there." Alec said.

Interlude 7

Armsmaster's synthesised tone spelled it out in plain facts. "We have a concert in town today. Judas Priest. Cross reference with last week's gang violence. Add in the increasingly metal use of powers in the city."

Dragon swore under her breath. "I'll get the warning started. The Painkiller is coming."

Hannah swore she could see a smiley face flicker across Collin's visor.

8

"Statistically, one in four of you will die."

(The DM has rolled 1d4)

(The DM has chosen to keep this roll hidden)

Bastion had been caught using racially charged insults on television. Then he'd been publicly reprimanded by Legend, and had apologized on national television for having done something so wrong, that it took a fudge packer to remind him about what was right. From there, things had gotten worse and worse. He'd asked Alexandria how long her transition had taken. He'd called Eidolon a credit to his people. He'd told Myrridin magic was fake to his face. He'd laughed at one of Mouse Protector's jokes.

Kaiser gave him a knowing look.

"Good one blondie. Hope your lederhosen rides up your golden fuzzed trouser bratwurst." Bastion called. I couldn't tell if he just hated everyone, or lacked the basic filters that kept people from speaking their entire inner monologue. Kaiser turned away.

"We think of Painkiller as the awkward middle child, acting out for attention. Not the unstoppable juggernaut of Armorface, or the ineffably dangerous nightmare that is the Sleeper."

"What sets the Painkiller apart is the focus on flesh and flash."

"Heavily armored. Rating is Punchyguy ten, we've tried to hurt Painkiller with nuclear weapons only to see it walk out from the explosion slowly, the fires consuming everything behind, while the orchestra swells dramatically."

The running theory was that the Endbringers were indestructible barring a single weakness that we had failed to exploit so far. And Painkiller was the "weakest" of the three. Armorface had survived head on collisions from atomic bombs without so much as a scratch. The Sleeper... no, The Man on the Moon was too far away to do anything to right now.

"An aura that forces displays of impressive heroism and self motivated showboating, and changes the surroundings to match the appropriate level of drama. Over the course of the next few hours, this storm may get worse, but rest assured that the lightning and storms of fire are purely for decorative purposes. Rating Tilter 5."

It wasn't real blood, but nevertheless the sky was bleeding at the dark presence coming for us all.

"Finally, Painkiller's primary power is biokinesis. Touchy 8/8. Short ranged. A single moment of contact is enough to kill you."

That was what they said. I prayed that they were telling the truth.

"We'll need to try and identify the target. A single individual will be picked out as the recipient of the Painkiller's focus."

A pair of giant sharks with grinning skull like faces led a chariot as it reached the base of the Protectorate's headquarters. A single figure, almost unnoticeable, lept from the carriage of skin and muscle to the base.

"It's been evacuated." Legend called.

A few minutes passed. Everything went dark. I placed another quarter in the binoculars.

The figure returned, and jumped down. It retrieved a weapon from the seat of the chariot, a scythe longer than the figure was tall. With a single slice, the base of the oil rig was severed. The pillars collapsed. Money well spent, I muttered.

The chariot drew up to the shore, and its dread rider stepped out.

A woman, some 6 feet in height, covered from head to toe in what looked like generic evil woman's fantasy armor. Made out of human skin and bone. If Sauron was a girl with a fetish for eyes, she would be Genoscythe. Her other name didn't need to be spoken. Spikes poked out of every shoulder blade, out of every link of sausage link chainmail. And the eyes. Tiny things embedded into every surface. PHO speculated that they were still alive, forced to watch as she committed ever greater atrocities.

In each of her hands was a grossly distended spinal chord that served as the handle for a scythe, tipped with a skull at the top, a sharp blade extending out of the open jaw.

Her helmet was a mess of spikes and bones gathered together into a sort of anime inspired haircut. A pair of glasses was taped on top of the eye slits.

Then she spoke. Her voice as loud and terrifying as every broadcast.

"WE ARE GENOSCYTHE AND WE'RE HERE TO MAKE YOU FEEL SAD AND THINK ABOUT SOCIETY'S ABILITY TO TOLERATE VILLAINS IN ORDER TO SURVIVE ME AND STUFF!"

There was a long pause, and a thunderous intake of breath.

"Faster than a bullet."

"She's half man and half machine."

"Mankind is going under deadly wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeels."

As she vanished from my sight, all I could hear was a faint cry of "Painkiller."

"Kill me you green painted baby!"

Bastion died as he always wanted to. Crushed in a collapsing building.

"Not to bother you. But X deceased. Just thought you ought to no. Don't want to be a downer."

The swordy stick's head was bent, the blade at a slight angle. Behind the cracked frame of her glasses, Genoscythe stared in shock. She coughed once, black blood flowing from her mouth.

The head of the world's greatest monster slipper from her shoulders, a perfect cut left behind by the axe-blade-on-a-spear's edge.

The stump was still for a moment, and then started to spurt more violently than a fire hose.

"Hey. I member. You. Its Madison, right?"

"T..taylor?"

"Everything, I did to you, people are going to forget me."

"No they won't, yer, yer a hero. Tell my dad..."

I blacked out, landing in the spreading pool of miscoloured blood.

(EDITORS NOTE: From This point, Madison is the protagonist, but still manages to accomplish pretty much just the same stuff as Taylor anyway. So. You know. Not gonna make a joke here but...)

"OH MY GOD SOPHIA HESS IS SHADOW STALKER."

"SHHHHHHH!"

"You didn't know? I thought we all knew that?"

"Armsmaster. This is a very serious accusation. What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Beep."

"Armsmaster I'm afraid you're going have to attend sensitivity training."

"BEEEEEEEEEEEEE KKNZZKAKKDKAKERRORORERROR It was for the good of everyone!"

"I COULD HAVE SAVED EVERYONE!"

His lips looked like they would burst, sweat trickling down as he fought to keep his mouth closed.

"FALSEHOOD DETECTED." He sputtered.

Lisa grinned...

"DON'T YOU DARE SAY IT!" I yelled.

Lisa grinned vulpinely.

"GOD DAMN IT!"

"Fair enough. Armsmaster broke the truce, so we have to let a villain off the hook. You're free to go Browbeat."

Interlude 8

Coil and Mr. Pritter accidentally become a thing.

9

The wards are a bunch of dysfunctional idiots.

Weld is tactless. "I'm a gallant sort. You all fall under my aegis."

Clockblocker has tattletale speak. For puns.

Vista. Power involves stretching space. Short height, Manton limitation on organics. Angle for this.

Weld. Is not actually welding, does not heat metal. Does not enjoy fighting, but practices regularly. Reference testing his mettle.

Vista wants another human girl on the team.

Flechette is in fact, checking out everyone.

Sophia Hess is the Predator, and is beaten by mud.

10

The Undersiders hack Dragon's emails.

Contains the entirety of 10 x 10

Coil gives the rundown on the Slaughterhouse.... 8? I guess?

11

11A

"I brought you a puppy."

"I'm listening."

11B

Labyrinth sighed.

"Mimi. Please tell me this isn't another booty call."

11.C

Alan Gramme.

Then the Sleeper.

He killed Gramne's wife and child, and stole the spaceship that Alan had built to let them escape from this dying world.

"This message plays if the machine has found Collin Wallis."

Mannequin froze in place.

"My name is Alan Gramme. I am, was Sphere. I brought hope to the world, but I cannot sustain my own. I feel own regret, and sorrow. Soon I will have torn away at the parts of myself that can hurt. I am unsure what it will feel like, what I will be like when I have finished. I want to take away the parts that can feel the way I did. But I left pieces, pieces to ensure that I could tell you this the day I found you again. That no matter what happens, I cannot, will not, hurt you."

"I did things, to piece you back together. To ensure that you could survive. I cut away the parts of you that would hurt. That would miss her. You must be so confused, spending all your life, living a lie. Thinking that you were just a machine. You are so much more than that. I need you to know, that no matter how far I go, how much I cut away, whatever I decide to do to myself to try to stop feeling this way. There will be a part of me, down there, hidden at the very last piece of Alan Gramme I leave behind. There is a part that can feel something. And it's love. For you. Nora Gramme is dead. My wife is dead."

"Collin Gramme. You are my son. And you are alive."

*CLICK*

"I love you."

*CLICK*

"I love you."

*CLICK*

"I love."

TRUTH DETECTED

ERROR

"That's not true! He died that day! You dedicated your life to killing everyone who even came close to what you did!"

"You've spent your whole life breaking people just to get rid of your angsty crap, because you couldn't hold it when your wife died! You are a pathetic puppet, a disgusting doll filled with organs. You're less of a person than I am!"

Mannequin sliced deep into Armsmaster's shoulder.

Armsmaster looked at the cut, just about the sputtering circuits where his arm had been torn off. A thick red fluid, organic in composition, seemed to be leaking out.

His vision started to fade.

The last words he heard, screaming through the computer. "Collin. I love you!"

11h

Bonesaw shipped Mouse Protector and Ravager.

"Well if you want my dad fixed so much why don't you do it!"

"I will!" Bonesaw said, pouting. "There. I healed your dad's brain. It took me five seconds. You suck."

12

13

14

15

16

Interlude – The Book of Nomrom

"Hello." Shouted the first of the monsters.

"Hello!" Shouted a second.

Piggot started to retrace her steps.

"And I would like to share with you this most amazing book."

Coil leaves Brockton Bay forever to pursue marriage with Mr. Pritter

17

The Travelers get sucked into the game.

18

Noelle is a bitch.

Interlude 18 – Actual Anime Protagonist Melanie Fitts

19

Noelle and the Travelers leave for Earth Aleph, Trickster proposes to Noelle.

"Whatever happened to Cody?"

Oh and Cauldron get spoiled.

20

21

Whoops Alexandria choked on a bee.

"I've just beaten up Regent."

Oh no.

"I've just killed Brian."

Oh Brian.

22

ARMORFACE SMASH PUNY CANON TRIGGERS. ARMORFACE GET SHOT IN FACE. NOONE EVER HURT ARMORFACE AGAIN!

23

24

25

I have never been a villain. Deluding yourself helps.

The fourth Endbringer, Skye Aria

MONTAGE

Fight against Astridalos: An incredibly damaged ex-nazi Endbringer who controls inorganic matter.

Interlude 25 -

Only one Gray Lad. Jack could only handle one Gray Lad.

As far as personalities went, Gray Lad's was just the worst.

A twenty year old man stepped out, dressed in a school uniform. Short shorts. White shirt. Knee high socks. "Nicholas."

"Jacob."

He paused. Gray Lad flickered, and another two images of him making little guns with his fingers and clicking his tongue appeared.

"You sly old dog how have you been? What is it, like twenty years? Come on man, how'd you do it, I would've died by now, well I did, aw you have to meet the missus, she's beautiful, bit Welsh but eh, what're you going to do. Neighbors are a bit crap, Birdcage amirght, dating her was a little awkward being dead and all but hey, got to share her with another two ghosts at a time amirght. But look at you, all grown up, and who's this darling little girl? Don't tell me you've adopted. Say, you and ol' Harby actually manage to seal the deal then? I'm not seeing a ring.

26

"GRAY LAD?" Said the roomful of guards. Gray Boy touched each of them, and granted them eternal life.

"Banter! I just caught fooking Scion. Get in there."

"Don't worry Jack, I'll save you!"

"Gray Lad you dumb. Huh. Well. Guess I'm stuck now."

The Slaughterhouse 279 attack. Lisette is convinced to go for a joyride.

"Scion. Turn this thing off. Infinite Lager has lost its appeal."

"Yeah, I bet you couldn't even kill England." She said.

"Hold my drink." The Entity replied.

27 Something

And then the most dangerous woman in the world made her choice.

Four words that stopped Eidolon in his tracks.

"Fancy a cold one?"

Interlude 27 – Contessa

DOC MOM! ONE OF THE CASE 53s IS BEING SUPER RUDE TO ME!

28

Eidolon, Lisette, and Scion find cauldron.

Scion is surrounded in sorrow.

Doctor Mother stabs him in that one spot.

Doctor Mother, Contessa, and the Number Man realise that due to the pointless nature of everything that has thusfar happened, the creation of the Case 53s is in fact, the evilest thing that anyone has done recently.

Lisette convinces everyone to share a cocktail party.

999 999 999

What a shrill and pointless fic.


	8. Das Ende

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fin

This fic is over, nothing to see here.


	9. Arc Two "Bringing Skeksis Bakuda", Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor uses wikia dot com without an advert loudly playing while she tries to read about the Undersiders, the gang of scamps and mischievous types that she's definitely not gonna join at some point.

The "This thread is more than 2 years old. Your message may be considered against the rules for the following reasons: It is very likely that it does not need any further discussion and thus bumping it serves no purpose. If you feel it is necessary to make a new reply, you can still do so." had helped to wake me up, as did the hot shower and the "Be aware that malicious compliance will result in more severe penalties. If you are unsure if your post would contribute to the thread, you may ask about it in the Staff Communications subforum" my dad had left in the pot. Even so, the fatigue didn’t help the feeling of disorientation over just how normal the day seemed as I made my way to Winslow Not As Good As Arcadia High School for the Lower Classes. Double space. Just a matter of years ago, I had been in a life and death fight, I had beat Lung, I had even met Armsmaster and the Undersiders. Now it was just a fanfic like any other.

I felt a bit nervous as I got to homeroom. Having not seen me for two years, I figured that Ms. Knott probably knew already.

All in all, I felt Taylorly as I made my way to my computer class, which kind of sucked because neither Emma, Sophia or that other one were in this class, meaning I couldn't get back to hating school yet. Like any normal student, I ignored the class instructions and searched for the most vulgar images I could get though the safe search filter. Google Search Pericardium Jack Slash.

When I got bored of that, I had the sense that either me or Tattletale were the leader of that group I had encountered, and since I was me, I turned my attention to Tattletale. I searched the wiki. I was redirected to the page for Lisa Wilbourn, and the result I got was surprisingly long, starting with a header reading "There was no long-term, and trying to cling to one would only spoil it all, This article contains spoilers regarding the ending of Worm and plot of the sequel." There was paragraphs on how she was a alleged villain active in Brockton Bay before and after Worm, with a picture that showed her vulpine butt and the side of her boob.

I looked up Grue, and got only a single sentence that read "Nobody cares", with a drawing of his costume with what I thought was stink lines coming off of it.

I searched for Bitch, and got a picture of you.

The last member of the group was Regent. Double space.

I turned my attention to the class assignment, drawing a calculator in Microsoft Paint. If my mood had been sour before, using Microsoft Paint made it worse. It took me fifteen minutes to complete.

I looked up Lung on the Wiki, then foreshadowing, then Oni Lee, which redirected back to a sub heading on Lung's page, which still had a hyperlink on the name Oni Lee even though Oni Lee didn't have his own page. Lung was estimated to have 40 to 50 ABBA fans in his gang, and he had made an effort to assimilate every gang with ABBA fans in the city. It didn't matter if you were asian or not, if you liked Mamma Mia! Lung expected you to either join or help pay for his upholstery.

According to the wiki, after that one time Lung beat everyone offscreen, Lung had apparently suffered a defeat at the hands of literally every other cape, from Dragon to Michael Dorn, but was somehow still considered a threat. A blurb read, ‘Armsmaster successfully ambushed and singlehandedly defeated the leader of the Brockton Bay Upholstery Club. Lung was taken to a minimum security hole that he will be left in until the villain’s trial by stone. Given Lung’s extensive and well documented streak of failures, it is expected that he will be unable to best the Chamberlain, and he will face imprisonment in the world's deepest hole, the Birdcage. Bottom text.’

I shook the shoulder of the guy next to me and pointed to the screen. "Me! That was me!"

"You're Armsmaster?" Greg asked.

I withdrew my arm. I had just touched Greg.

"I thought Armsmaster was a robot," Greg said, as I stepped away from my computer.

"Are you an angel?" Greg asked, as I left the classroom.

123 456 789

Insinuation 2.2

I was endeavoring to make a trans Ms Knott joke in today's chapter but decided against it. It isn't 2011 and Wildbow deleted anything that would grant context to the joke anyway. The gist of the joke was going to be Taylor saying that she was going to encounter one "Mr" Knott in her homeroom, and then remarking something like, "Oh, it really has been two years" on encountering something beyond her expectations. Stay tuned for further Genuine Only nobody Losers Like You... Word Of Authors in the future.


	10. 2.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor narrowly avoids sitting on juice.

I had forgotten to worry about getting into trouble for skipping class, but more than that I'd forgotten something else. It was going to bother me all day.

A pair of bitches were crouching by either side of a desk. Girls.

I went to my usual seat and found an unopened bottle of orange juice on my seat. If I sat down on that, it would be really uncomfortable. Irritated, I sat down on the orange juice. It was hard and uncomfortable. Mr Gladly spawned in the room, adopting a more casual pose as he finished rendering. His animation had really improved in the two years I had been gone. No more clipping was almost worth the two year hiatus. It was stuff like that that had made Mr Gladly my least favourite teacher.

"Mr G?" I asked.

"Call me G, Mr G is my dad."

"G, there is a bottle of orange juice on my seat, and I need a new textbook. My old one wasn't ruined."

"Oh, well just use that bottle then," he said, and he unconvincingly handed me another textbook. I tried to ignore the stage hand that had done it for him as I set about soaking my new textbook with the juice, managing to get my chair wet in the process.

"Now go join Sparky and Greg," he commanded, his finger and his eyeline ever so slightly to the right of where Greg and Sparky were sat.

Sparky was out of touch with reality, standing inside the space the table should have occupied. He'd gotten his nickname when a teacher had picked up on the field of static electricity he seemed to give off, the only measureable sign that he was anything more than a trick of the light. Greg was the opposite, sat down, existing.

I got my share of the homework out of my new backpack. Mr. Gladly had asked us to come up with a list of ways that capes had influenced society, and I had used various clippings from the newspapers I had needed for my costume to back up my conclusion.

“I didn’t get much done,” Greg said, presuming that I was willing to talk to him. “I got distracted by this new game called Potential Future Wildbow Story Reference, have you played it?”

"Is it the one with the woman who has her control of her body and place in society taken away from her?" I replied.

"Oh, they're all like that."

One minute later and we still couldn't work out what story he was supposed to be referencing. G idled in the background, looping through the same motions he always did when he wasn't talking. I could hardly focus on the conversation, accutely aware of every little bug around me. Sparky had started to sink, his head was halfway through the desk now. There was a book rattling in the bookcase where someone hadn't put it back.

Eventually our group was called up to present, and I was able to illustrate my points with a collage of headlines, all arranged so that the first letters of each one spelled "Society is fucked." I was even able to point out how with parahumans tackling crime, additional training had bred more expensive and oppressive cops, with twice as much police violence and twice as many vacation days.

After a standing ovation from Greg and a crackle of electricity from an increasingly transparent Sparky, the bell rang. Immediately, everyone but me and Sparky left the classroom. G was the first through the door, his arm missing the doorknob by more than a foot as he opened it.

I gathered my books, sparing Sparky another glance before he faded into nothing. I left the room.

Emma, Sophia, Regina George, Gretchen Wieners, Karen Smith, Heather, Heather, Heather, and someone were waiting for me in the hall.

999 999 999

Please read something better.


	11. 2.4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are far too many bullies in this scene now.

_A moment ago..._  
  
“Everybody likes her.” Heather said.  
  
"I know, and like, her clothes are so fetch." Heather responded.  
  
"And then I said, like, thanks, Valemancer!"  
  
Despite the way the conversation sounded, they were almost certainly talking to me, they were just pretending to talk to one another while talking about the author while pretending to talk to one another. It was sheer elegance in it is simplicity. All the while, Emma stayed back and stayed quiet, with the vulpinest of grins on her face. I couldn’t meet the eyes of any of the other girls without them screaming in my face like a babboon, so I just glared at Emma.  
  
“Prettiest girl in our grade,” Emma said, blinking. I won. The game. The one you just lost.  
  
"She smells nice," one girl said. "Like oranges. You could roast her alive and it would smell just like an orange glazed gammon. Girls like that."  
  
"Thank you," I said.  
  
"I'm allergic to oranges," another girl said. "They make me cry."  
  
I stuck my tongue out at Emma.  
  
"What's the matter Taylor?" Emma said, "You look upset."  
  
"Fuck you," I said gracelessly.  
  
"No," Emma hissed, her voice going quiet. "You're not supposed to say that,"  
  
"Say what?"  
  
"Fuck you."  
  
"No, fuck you!" I shouted back.  
  
"No," Emma said, staying quiet. "You're supposed to say nothing."  
  
"Nothing." I said.  
  
"What's the matter, Taylor?" Emma said. "You look upset."  
  
"Fuck you!"  
  
"So upset you're going to cry yourself to sleep for a week!" Emma blurted.  
  
My next fuck you died in my throat as I realised that I was lame enough to get what she referencing.  
  
Almost a year before we had started high school, I had been at her house, both of us eating music and playing breakfast too loud. Emma's older sister had come down the phone with the stairs in her hand, and said my dad was on the other end of the phone waiting to tell me that my mother had been crushed to death when a printed copy of Worm fell out of a window. The doctors had said that if it had been just one arc shorter, she might have lived.  
  
I didn’t want to think about the month that had followed, but I was already having a flashback. I could remember overhearing my dad berating my mother’s body, because she’d been walking instead of driving, and she was the only one to blame. At one point I'd ate five days, and I had to turn to Emma for help, asking to eat her place. She got me a coffee instead, and took me to a playground where we could talk.  
  
“You know, I admire you,” she had said, abruptly.  
  
“Why?” I had responded, completely mystified about the fact that someone spectacularly gorgeous and amazingly amazing and robustly heterosexual like her could possibly find a glimmer of something to admire in me.  
  
“You’re so resilient. After your mom died, you were totally in pieces, but you put yourself back together. I couldn’t do that. I'm bad at jigsaws.”  
  
I could remember my admission, “I’m not resilient. I can hold it together during the day, but whenever someone says cry yourself to sleep for a week I cry myself to sleep for a straight week.”  
  
She'd remembered that moment, and now she was saying cry yourself to sleep. I felt like I could cry myself to sleep for a straight week.  
  
“It’s like you have a superpower, Emma!” one of the Heathers tittered.  
  
"No, that's Sophia," Heather said.  
  
"Shut up Heather," Heather said.  
  
I took my bag off and held it up in front of me.  
  
"Oh em gee, what is she doing?" one of the Heathers said.  
  
I screamed and charged through the girls, using my heavy book filled backpack as a battering ram. I passed harmlessly through Sophia, knocked Emma over, and ran down the hallway and out through the open window at the end of the hallway. It was faster than taking the stairs.  
  
What use is escapism, when the world you are escaping to is three stories down?  
  
Vaughn Ohlman on July 16, 2011 at 16:32 said:  
Yuck. You keep reminding me of why I hate emotional ennui.  
  
999 999 999  
  
Please leave a like, and like, why don't you tell me what you enjoyed in the comments?


	12. 2.Don't worry, there wasn't a cliffhanger anyway.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor skips school to google spider smut.

If you looked at Brockton Bay as a patchwork of stellar and squalor, upper class and lower class with no middle ground, then fuck you.  
  
Following my tactical withdrawal from school grounds, I hadn’t been sure what to do. That fall had been pretty dangerous. I'd almost died back there. I was lucky I'd landed on some nondescript soft thing, or I might not have survived that fall. But I had survived the fall. Unfortunately. Now I had to think of something to do that wasn't being bullied at school, and I hadn't had to do that for a long time. Think of something else to do, not be bullied at school. I'd had to do that for the last three months. My dad worked an unreliable schedule, so I couldn’t spend the rest of the afternoon watching the new season of Love Bugs unless I wanted to risk having to interact with that oafish failure of a man. I didn’t want to hang around the general area of Winslow School unless I wanted to run into other sad bullied teens who had ran home crying and have to fight for territory, so that had left me the options of the half-hour walk to Park Place or a trip to the Boardwalk, and I didn't have the money to go to the Boardwalk. I headed downtown towards Park Place, still feeling like I was missing something.  
  
The streets were busy with people on their lunch break. Businessmen and businesswomen were heading to restaurants and fast food places, respectively. My stomach growled as I passed a line of people waiting their turn at a street vendor. So I stopped, waited in line, and got myself a sausage sarnie with onions off some geezer runnin a barbie with a packet of sauzies from the supermarket.  
  
A little bit later, grease all over my fingers and mouth after my trash hot dog, I figured I'd pay a trip to the public library to get my fingerprints all over one of the keyboards.  
  
The library was busy, which made sense in universe because noone was supposed to have smart phones in worm, and really how many people were texting on the toilet in 2011? So business people and the jobless but well dressed were going to the library to sext. I would have included Brockton Bay’s biggest and fanciest high school, the nearby Arcadia High for Poshos and Wards, in that generalisation, but I doubted many dirty poshos could be bothered to waste 20 minutes walking to a public library when their school had a better one.  
  
The Central Library looked almost more like a museum or art gallery than anything else, with tall ceilings, pillars and massive pieces of Wagnerian artwork hung to frame the hallways between the major sections of the building. If it wasn't for Wolfgang Von Anders' generous donations this probably would have been a tiny, dingy thing made out of concrete, with less illustrations of operas that had been wishy washy yearnings for past glory when they'd been made. I headed up to the second floor, where there were about twenty computers. The clock approached me from my one o’clock, and I stood aside to let it take the first free computer, waiting a bit longer so I could get a station with a little more... privacy.  
  
By the time I sat down, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to search for.  
  
I bit my lip and typed in "Judge Dredd Nosferatu female".  
  
I had no idea what I would be getting into. Minutes passed, image after image passing before my eyes.  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
Startled, I looked up. A middle aged woman in a red jacket stood just behind me. As I met her eyes she asked, “Are you done?” She gestured at the computer, where spider women were everywhere.  
  
I smiled and told her, “Fuck off.”  
  
This was a production of Worm, by some loser that posted once or twice on Parahuman Audio. Worm and the parahumans stories are written and owned by J. C. Macrae, who is probably editing Browbeat out of this chapter right now. Music for this chapter was by nobody. There wasn't any music.


	13. 2.6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor meets the local gang of teenage ne'er'do'we'll's, the Undersiders. But this time, they aren't wearing fancy costumes this time.

This message was sent from my mobile.

I had caught a bus from the library to a random alleyway in the middle of nowhere, where Lung's goons still wandered about pointing guns at the air.

I hadn't known why I'd done it, but the nature of my power demanded that I must, so I did. Had I not, I may not have been Taylor enough.

Bugs, it probably goes without saying, suck. They're the worst. Just lame. Outright lame. That's why I stepped on every one I saw on the way there. They suck. I saw one heading up the fire escape I'd taken last night and went to follow it. That thing wasn't getting away from me.

It was them alright. The kids from last night. The girl had dirty blonde hair tied back into a loose braid, a smattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose and the same animalistic smile that I had recognized from the night prior. She wore a long black long sleeved long tt-shirt long with a picture of some sort of orange furry animal on it and a knee length kilt, a denim skirt might as well be a kilt damn it. What's the difference? That one is for men? Fuck the notion of mens and womens clothes, that's how you get "Tactical Kilts". I was surprised by the bottle-glass cerulean of her orbs.

The smaller and more interesting of the two guys – but still not as interesting as literally any woman – was undoubtedly Regent. I recognised the way his hair was literally the same. He was a guy, but not in a way that wouldn't make me want to check what pronouns he used. Luckily, we'd already been introduced or I'd have had to awkwardly avoid referring to him in conversation. He was pretty, with a triangular face, light aryan eyes and full lips pulled into a bit of a dramatic woe is me pout. I pegged him as having been pegged before, but I couldn’t say I was interested, myself. I kept an eye on him, he looked about ready to flounce at me any second.

Grue was startling in appearance, by contrast. The pictures were right, he did have stink lines coming off of him. Taller than me by at (double space) least a foot, Grue had skin, hair, and a jaw. This was a man who was a man.

“And she arrives, hmmmm?” Tattletale skeksised, “Pay up.”

Regent’s pout deepened for a second, one hand reaching towards his brow. I dropped into a fighting stance, ready in case he was about to drape himself on anyone. Tense moments passed as he fished in his pocket for a plastic bag filled with duck's bills, which he knifed over to Tattletale.

“You bet on whether I would show up?” I ventured.

"Yes," said Regent, with the voice of a kid from drama school. "You missed the part where you were supposed to talk to Tattletale."

Damn it. I knew I'd missed something.

Grue chuckled warmly, and extended his hand to me, “Hey, I’m Brian.”

"Nobody cares Brian!" I said. "I only came up here for the bug."

"The bug?"

"That bug?" Regent said, flouncing.

My guard had been lowered, my atention had wavered for a moment, and already Regent was draped across me, pointing at the bug that had hidden amongst the flies circling Brian's stink lines.

“Lisa,” Tattletale introduced herself. She didn’t offer me her hand to shake, which was good because I was ignoring her too, even if her chest was as large in person as in that drawing of her online. It would have felt out of place if she had offered a hand, but not as out of place as that bug.

"Take that, you bug!" I proclaimed, swatting the bug from the air. It wasn’t that it seemed unfriendly, but I fucking hated bugs.

“I’m Alec,” Regent informed me, with a quiet voice, then he added, “And Rachel is a Bitch.”

"Sucks to be her."

"Rachel didn't come here because she's waiting for a dramatic time to enter," Regent said, unflouncing himself from my shoulder. "And besides, she didn't agree with the point of this meeting."

"There isn't a point to this meeting. It is a shallow and meaningless step on an endless rung of steps I am forced to follow in life that things might pass as they were intended in spite of whatever pointless and stupid changes are made, whether it be through misremembrance or outright annoyance at the way things were. Her presence would annoy me no less than the hell that is this experience. I should have stayed at the coffee shop outside of time with the white haired woman and the faceless patriarchal mysogynist before ever returning to this, but Purgatory is only a temporary respite, however long of a forever it seems."

“Sorry,” Brian apologised.

"Don't be. Now give me my lunch box full of silver, we have a Worm to know each other."

“You have two choices,” Lisa explained, ignoring me.

"I have no choices. I take the lunchbox."

Lisa smiled at me, “If you want the full scoop, I’m afraid the details on what we do only come with team membership."

"Fuck you," I said, raising a middle finger to myself.

999 999 999

DADA, not part of the solution, part of the problem but dumber.


	14. Arc 2, Chapter Seven: "Broken Promises"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which tayler finds out how cool all the undersiders stuff is

As I agreed to carry on with the Wormening, there was some whooping and cheering from Lung's henchmen. I felt a touch guilty, for putting this off as long as I had. I also felt pleased with myself, in a rational for this Bet way.

“Where do we go from here?” Lisa asked Brian.

"I can't remember. Either Fugly Bob's or our hideout. We should know this by now," Brian said, “It’s not like we haven't done this before. With Regent. I suppose we should let that bitch know, but she said she might work today.”

"She doesn't have a job?"

"I think she volunteers at the pound?"

"I thought that was something we made up," Regent proclaimed, cavorting about the roof.

“If Kiddo is okay with it, let’s stop by our place,” Lisa suggested, “Then if German for Revenge is back, we celebrate the new recruit.”

“Sure,” I said.

“It’s just a few blocks away,” Brian said, “But we would stand out,"

Regent completed another cartwheel.

"We'd stand out more if you came with in costume.”

"I'm not wearing my costume?" I said.

"Oh."

I felt a stab of regret at not having chosen better clothes to wear than a loose fitting sweatshirt and jeans that were too big for me. That regret quickly turned to a pang of anxiety. (What if my father saw me?) What if GAVIN saw me? What if he saw what, Girl? I quickly and unverbosely stopped myself before my stupid stupid self could get me any more worked up than I already had. Which wasn't to say that I wasn't still worked up, but I certainly wasn't ten thousand words per chapter worked up. I was Taylor, but I wasn’t regular old Taylor, not here, not on this nondescript rooftop. In the here and now, I was the kiddo who had put Lung in a hole in the ground. I was the girl who was... I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing here. Was I going undercover to try and get the details on a particularly persistent gang of supervillains? Was I starting a slippery slope towards becoming a villain for real? Was I going to be stuck with this for 30 arcs? Was I Kiddo? I was, until I came up with a better name to go by, which was unlikely. I was the Kiddo who was Taylor.

If I said I made my way down the fire escape filled to the brim with confidence, I’d have said I made my way down the fire escape filled to the brim with confidence. I made my way down the fire escape filled to the brim with confidence.

“Hi,” I said, vulpinely, using my hair to comb my fingers back out of order. “I guess it wouldn’t work if you kept calling me Kiddo or New Girl. I’m Taylor.”

"Sew you say," Lisa said.

Alec offered the slightest roll of his eyes at the pun, while Brian just grinned. Lisa, though, put her arms around my shoulders and gave me a two armed full squeeze of a hug. It surprised me how good it felt, how nice she smelled. It was like I had been needing a hug from someone who wasn’t Greg Veder for a long time.

"Taylor?"

"Yes Lisa?"

"Can you please let go of me?"

"Oh, sure," I said, blushing nervously. I wished I had brought my mask. Damnation and hellfire, I was supposed to be better than this, not some mess who burned at the slightest gesture of humanity. What would my father have said? Kiddo, being a lesbian is pandering.

When I'd recovered enough to look at Lisa without burning like a tomato in an oven, we walked around the outside of Lung's goons as a group, careful not to make a sound. We walked deeper into the Docks as a group. While I had lived on the periphery of the area my entire life, and while most people would say that the neighborhood I lived in was full of chavs and therefore absolutely part of the ‘Docks’, it wasn't the Docks, because shut up.

It wasn't your momma's rough neighbourhood, this was downtown. So far downtown trees didn't know which way was up, and bats hung rightside up from telephone poles. Grass and weed grew between slats in the sidewalk, and opportunistic Merchants harvested it wherever they could. The road had potholes that you could hide a man eating case 53 in, and as we walked past one an unfortunate Merchant was caught and dragged down into it by a pair of red tentacles with a squelch and a sound like the zipper on a duffel bag. The buildings were all faded, made from nothing but peeling paint and papier mache.

There were people, too, though nobody you should care about. There were those you expected, like a homeless bag lady with a grocery cart with a shirtless old man sitting in it. There were others that surprised me though. I saw a woman with a baby's face, herding four identical children with the same grown woman's face into a factory building with a faded sign. We passed a twenty-something tattooed tree and his mermaid girlfriend, sitting on the sidewalk with paintings of bushes propped up around them. The girl licked her lips at Lisa as we walked by, and Lisa sped up a little.

Our destination was a red brick factory with a massive sliding metal door held shut by a Coil. The background of the sign at the top of the building had faded from red to a pale Squig Orange(tm), but I could make out the bold white subtitles that read ‘Redmond's Bricks’.

The Coil turned his head to watch us as we walked around to take the side entrance.

The interior was dark, lit only by a swastika shaped hole in the roof. I could make out what must have been massive weight machines and treadmills, and a poster of Fight Club on one of the walls.

“Come on,” Brian urged me. I looked back and saw that he was halfway up a staircase in the corner. I headed up after him, pinching my nose with my fingers.

The staircase opened up into what I would have termed the "Getting cereal and juice stains all over the couch" room, though the one room alone had nearly as much floor space as the ground floor of my house did, which was a bit of a waste because the giant TV was so far away from the couch that they might as well have just had a normal sized TV.

There were also some rooms and stuff, and a shoe, a fort made out of pizza boxes, a pile of mismatched dice and half written character sheets, fourteen cold cups of coffee in really ugly looking mugs, a drying rack with a lot of identical poofy white shirts on it, a bear trap with a fire axe leaning on the trigger bit in the middle of it, a crown covered in spiders, a dog eared copy of the book that had killed my mother, a camping table with a sack of money with a dollar sign on it on it, a plank of wood with a smile drawn on it, and a pink goat standing on the coffee table as if to say "Baa."

“I’m jealous,” I admitted, meaning it.

“Hmmmph,” Alec hmmphhed, draping himself over the couch, “What are you jealous for?”

"That goat doesn't have to do anything. It doesn't belong here. It doesn't have to do anything."

"Maa," the goat bleated.

"See? It didn't even meet what little expectations we had. I envy that goat. I am Sisyphus and I am fucking depressed."

"Maa."

"Maa to you too," I said to the goat, holding out my hotdog grease covered fingers for it to lick.

I heard barking from downstairs. The goat finished licking my fingers, and I started to walk the long twenty feet between the coffee table and the couch. I heard more barking, getting closer. A matter of half a minute of crossing a factory floor and climbing up a spiral staircase later I was sitting comfortably on the couch. Three snarling cat sized van sized creatures crossed the long stretch from the door to the couch, and started barking at me, drool flying from their mouths as their teeth gnashed and snapped. God, it was just like school.

*Laugh Track*


	15. 2.8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meat Cashmere.

“Call off your bitches, you crazy broad!” Brian shouted.

I sat still, not saying anything as the Rottweiler barked, the German Shepherd sniffed, and Oxford Comma slobbered at me.

“Call off the fucking dogs!” I heard Brian bellow, again.

"Don't use our phone, they're charging us more than on mobile," Alec said.

"Off the fucking dogs!" came a girl's voice as she kicked a nonexistent door open, striding triumphantly into the room like Plato from his cave, like Frankenstein from Frankenstein's laboratory, like Shrek from his outhouse.

She wasn’t that attractive. An unkind person might call her butch.

"Butch!" I said, pointing at her.

"Kiddo!" she said, pointing back.

"Alec," Alec said, peeling himself from the couch to pose dramatically, one hand leaning on the goat.

Butch had a square face, thick eyebrows, thicker thighs, and a nose that looked so broken that I could have drawn it with my wrong hand. She was solidly built, curvy without really departing from traditional female character body types. If she had been an elephant, which she wasn't, her trunk alone would have been bigger than mine, if I was an elephant. She had a torso, with meat on her bones and wine in her amporas. She was wearing spiked combat boots, black jeans with tears all over them, a spiked dog collar, and a green army jacket over a grey hooded sweatshirt with the word BITCH on it in magenta and lavender and blue striped letters. Her hair was short too I guess, like I dunno. It was cut short. That's all the description I can give here. If that seems underwhelming compared to the elaborate descriptions of her frame then I'm sorry. It was just sorta short with kinda longish sideburns and it was sorta a nice faded reddish colour, I don't know.

I took a deep breath. Then, speaking slowly so I wouldn’t stumble over my words or let a tremor into my voice, I asked “Whose goat is that?”

Butch looked at the goat, grunted, and pointed at Alec.

"Its mine, I named it Cashmere," Alec said, running his hands through soft looking lavender... Did goats have fur or wool? Hair? Fuzz?

“Kevin Norton fucking dammit!” Brian was shouting. He went on to say something else about everyone having pets but him, but I wasn't really listening, and neither should you.

For a few moments, I felt adrift, and by the time I realized I was adrift I was starting to float away from the couch. It was too late, and I had crossed half of the room.

Butch saw me approaching and raised her eyebrow, her dogs still dividing the barking, sniffing, and slobbering amongst each other as they followed along underneath me. Because I hadn’t slowed down before reaching her, I had to use my hands to stop myself from slamming into her face first.

But I just bounced harmlessly off her and fell to the floor.

A shadow fell over my vision, blocking my view of half the room and the dogs. It was a tall musky person standing between me and the lights. Brian, right in front of me, extending a hand towards me. Butch scratched her head with one hand as Brian helped me to my feet.

"This is Taylor," Brian said, slowly. "Taylor."

"Good, I need to get my jeans fixed," Butch said, looking down at the holes in her jeans. "They're falling to pieces. Brian can cook but he can't sew for shit."

Brian smiled. “I’ll take what I can get.”

999 999 999

Behold a chapter with all the conflict stripped out.


	16. "Just What are You Insinuation 2.9?"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, the years start coming.

R

“Christ,” I said, mostly to myself. I sucked my middle finger for a bit until the bleeding went down. This was why you were supposed to use a thimble. I would hardly describe fixing stitches as a bonding experience, but Butch more or less stayed quiet throughout the process as I pieced her jeans back together. I'd gotten quite good at needlework in the three months of sitting around and being depressed I'd had since I'd gotten my powers.

Brian looked at me and flashed a boyish smile. I looked away, embarrassed that a guy like him thought I was interested. He got up to head to the bathroom.

With Brian gone and Lisa absorbed in her copy of the 5th edition Monster Manual, I was left with Alec and Butch. To make conversation, I said, “Alec. You were going to tell me you go by Regent, right?”

"I go by Regent, right," Alec said. He waved a hand towards Brian and Brian promptly flopped head first onto the floor.

Lisa turned to me, smiling. "Yeah, there's a long boring explanation that deliberately undersells the power to make it seem scary later on, but for now Alec can make people fall over."

"What's the full explanation?"

"Well if I told you now I wouldn't be nearly as impressive later," Alec said, waiting for Brian to try to stand before taking Brian's leg out from under him again. "He loves it when I do this."

"And that bitch can turn those van sized monsters into dogs?" I said.

"Yes," Butch said.

"Rachel can do it with any van sized monsters," Lisa said.

"And nobody cares about Grue?" I said.

"Hey, who put that on my Fandom page?" Brian said.

"The site said last edited by Aisha Laborne."

"Who's that?" Brian asked Lisa.

"I don't know," Lisa said, taking her hand and lifting it slowly to her forehead. She made a fist, then stuck her thumb out, then extended her index finger.

Not wanting to feel left out I did the same.

“What time is it?” I asked her.

“Nineteen minutes before get a watch,” Lisa said. She didn’t even pretend to look at her watch or a clock as she said it, which was unsettling. It was a reminder that shut up. Pay attention. Don't just skim read this you utter dweeb. I'm trying to tell you the story of my life here and you're just reading through for jokes that make you laugh.

Brian asked me, “Do you have somewhere you need to be?

I replied "Do you want to add another quotation mark to that sentence?"

"Sorry, Brian said.

I glanced at that bitch. She was sitting next to the goat and looking like a mess, a bit of green around her gill slits. "Yo bitch, what time is it?"

"Four forty."

"Shit."

"What?"

"My dad's supposed to have forgotten to make dinner again at five."

"We could order a pizza?" Alec suggested, to a chorus of nods around the room.

“Phone’s in the kitchen if you want to call your dad,” Lisa said.

I wandered over to the kitchen.

"Hey Phone."

"Sup," Phone said.

"Can I borry your mobile for a minute? I kinda need to call my dad."

"Sure thing, just don't take too long, I'm almost out of minutes."

Phone handed me its mobile, and I rang my dad.

He was out of breath, but he kept his voice almost to a whisper. "Taylor? Is that you Taylor?"

"Dad?" I said, holding the mobile close to my head.

"There's a twig outside the house Taylor."

"Dad?"

"Don't come home tonight Taylor."

"It's going to be okay dad."

"Taylor, I, I don't know what to do."

"Stay inside, keep the blinds closed. You're a white man so it shouldn't actually be dangerous for you."

"Are, are you safe Taylor?"

"I'm staying with an ethnically and sexually diverse group of teenagers with attitude," I told him.

"Do they seem like morally dubious but ultimately heroic people?"

I heard a loud thump and turned around to see Brian with his face on the floor again, with Alec and Lisa pointing and laughing at him. That bitch was feeding Cashmere a wad of cash.

"Nope."


	17. Interlude 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victoria Dallon's interlude sees her beat up a Nazi.

More Like Interlude Cancelled 2k19

There were very few things, in Victoria Dallon’s estimation. Just, next to none at all. None of the things. People just kept killing them and now there weren't any in Brockton Bay at all. It was weird. What few things there were left splatted against her invisible forcefield, slowly building up a horrible patch in front of her view of where she was flying. She squinted, trying to look past it, and almost missed the flash of light on her left.

"Watch where you're flying!" the blur of light shouted.

"Well why don't you slow down you Nazi bimbo!" Victoria shouted back. Reformed or not she was gonna tailgate the fuck out of her if she pulled that again. Its not like there wasn't any room in the sky. Wait. She hit the breaks. She was almost certain she'd missed him. She turned her forcefield off, allowing the thin layer of dead bugs to fall away from her face.

Spotting her target, she whooped. And plunged too. She plunged hard, hard enough to shatter concrete and flatten a penny.

Her target looked down at her, with one hand on the floor, one knee down as if to kneel. But Victoria wasn't kneeling. She was plunging. Victoria held her plunge, relaxed herself, and then plunged again.

The man looked around, avoiding Victoria's gaze.

"Not so fast!" Victoria yelled.

The man turned around, looking at her. She met the eyes of her quarry with a bronzey glare, and plunged. She stayed in that plunging position for minutes, letting her died platinum but only really for this one scene curls flutter, and the cape that had come loose and gone off to one side flutter some more on her shoulder.

The man was generic white trash description. Idk. He had swastika earings? Is that too gay for a generic neo nazi henchman? Its 2019 and I don't know what's too strange for real life anymore.

“The woman you attacked was named Andrea Young,” she spoke.

The man looked over his shoulder, then did a little shrug.

"I didn't do it?"

"Andrea Young!" Victoria snarled, drool spilling down her heroic cleft chin.

"What if I did do it, but I told you I was white?" the man said.

"I think its safe to say that you're literally a Nazi," Victoria snarled, drool spilling onto her cape. "Or at the very least, you have friends who post online about how much they hate forced representation in movies. So how about you tell me everything the Empire is going to have will have going to do, and then I let you go?"

"Nothing. We're going to do literally nothing."

"A likely story!"

"We hate ABBA?"

"Who doesn't!" Victoria yelled, grabbing the nearest dumpster and slamming it into the man where it belonged. Trash belonged in the Nazis.

999 999 999

Then that conversation you already read in arc the kitchen sink happened so I guess you can go back and read it there, I'm not copy pasting it here, that'd just be redundant. For more Nazis getting beaten up, or even killed, go check out Nimrod by Pita Enigma, Tank by Maroon Sweater, or just watch the Green Room. With the way the world is, we need all the catharsis we can get.

999 999 999

“No. Nothing was broken, and I didn’t screw up anything," said Amy, for the last time ever.


	18. 3.1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An average chapter for DADA really, all things considered.

Tuesday morning found me hopping again. "Hi Tuesday," I said, but it just ran past me.

There was something appealing about being out and about before the city had woken up. One day it would, and the city would reach into the sky to snuff out the sun, and then would begin a thousand arcs of darkness. Oceans would run orange with orange juice. Skies would run purple with grape juice, except in England where it would run purple with blackcurrant cordial. I was alive in the last great age of man, and when the age of the parahuman came I could only hope to be long dead/in a coma/alive on an alternate world.

I had been hopping every morning since I got shoved into a locker. This way I would be fast enough to avoid getting shoved into a locker. It made me fitter for caping too I guess. In february of two years ago, Sophia had chased me through the corridors, I think her goal had been to shove a roll of duct tape in my ear, but I'd been fast enough to run away from her.

While I could hardly say I was heavy, before, I’d had the unfortunate combination of a slight bulge, small breasts and broomstick-thin arms and legs. It had added up to me looking something like a frog forced to stand up on its hind legs, and everyone had called me kermit for a bit which hurt because kermit was a man. Three and a half months had burned away the body fat, leaving me very lean, like a thin frog forced to stand up on its hind legs. Two years of drinking coffee with full cream had built my fat back up again, and now I looked like an average sized frog forced to stand up on its hind legs.

The route I took every day varied, at my father's insistence streets had moved themselves subtly about so that one day a right I needed to take might have become a left. Sometimes a Coil was watching and something he wasn't.

THe Boardwalk was posh, which meant everywhere was closed except for the coffee shops. Shop windows were protected by thick "Closed" signs and scary looking well dressed men standing just outside with their hands held together over their crotch.

Brian was leaning on the wooden railing, looking at the beach. He had a coffee cup in each of his pockets. I stopped beside him, and he greeted me with a broad smile.

"A broad smile," Brian said, still looking out across the bay.

"An embarassed smile," I said, hoping the fact that I was out of breath from hopping everywhere would cover up my shameful heterosexuality.

"That oil rig really ruins the horizon."

"Yeah," I said, blushing.

"Your donuts ran away," Brian said.

"Where?"

"There," he said, pointing at something in the water I'd mistook for an abandoned rubber ring. It waved back at us as it floated away.

"Damn."

“I’m sorry for Rachel and that whole incident last night” Brian said.

"Its okay, I like her."

"Cool."

I spotted another donut rolling across the beach below us. I reached out with my power and stopped it in its tracks. Though I didn’t need to, I extended my finger and pointed at it, then waved my finger lazily as I made the donut explode.

"What exactly can your power do again?" Brian asked.

"Everything and nothing," I said whistfully. I used to think I could just achieve whatever I was supposed to, but it was more than that. I could do anything I liked so long as I didn't stop pushing my boulder.

"I make smoke," Brian said.

"That's cool."

"And I can see through the smoke too."

"Wow," I said, staring at the happy donut floating away. I could kill that one too. I didn't have to, but I could. Or I could leave it, and make a seagull happy.

"I should probably get the coffees back to the rest of the team," Brian said.

"Yeah, I'm scheduled to go get bullied some more," I replied.

I headed home and prepared for school offscreen, but when I got to class, Sophia was waiting for me. Sophia was dark scaled with black tentacles normally long enough to reach to the small of her back, though she currently had them all tied up in a sorta dreadlock ponytail. I couldn’t help but resent the fact that even with her being a smelly ugly bitch, pretty much every girl in the school would still pick her over me.

"Something," Sophia said, and all of the other girls laughed.

And then I realised, I didn't have to take this anymore. I was done with the boring school part. I was free to hang out with my ethnically and sexually diverse group of teenage friends. Okay I was still an ugly frog, but I could be the gay-in-the-happy-sense-est ugly frog in all of Brockton. And all I had to do was kick myself.

I turned around and kicked myself out the nearest window, hands in my pockets as I hurtled towards something soft and Veder shaped.


	19. 3.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor's epic quest to get to the Undersiders' hq.

It was a good thing Greg Veder was a wretched and spineless thing or I might have broken his back landing on him like that. Instead he just smiled and tried to tell me about a joke he'd read online. I caught a bus back to the docks, and Greg insisted on talking to me the entire time we were at the bus stop.

I was pleasantly surprised that the line for the bus was only long enough to reach just outside the Undersiders' headquarters. The Coil outside watched me as I walked past, back towards the school and the front of the line. But by the time I got to the front I wasn't paying attention, and I caught the wrong bus, and that one let me off about 1015 minutes away from their headquarters, which was very inconvenient.

It was a nice day, if a bit windy. Windy enough to blow me right back into Brockton Bay. The sky was a brilliant and cloudless gold, which was the universal sign that Kevin Norton was sticking a cat in a tree. If the sky had been silver, he was freeing a cat. If the sky was red at night, Scion's delight.

Living in Brockton Bay, you learned stuff like that. How to tell what time of day it way by staring at the sun, how to read the future in the entrails of birds, how to not get your keys stolen by temporally displaced chavs, how to tell if someone was canonincally straight, what to watch for. For example, I knew that the azian teenagers who were leaning against the railing of the boardwalk were fans of ABBA, even if they weren’t wearing gang colours, because they looked confident instead of afraid. I knew the tattoo on the right buttock of the man lifting boxes into the florist’s van that read ‘Exterminate, Exterminate, Exterminate!’ meant the guy was a nerd.

The woman in the uniform who was talking to a shop owner? She wasn’t a cop or a security guard or a normal fascist tool, but an anarcho capitalist tool. She was one of the enforcers the Merchants of the Boardwalk hired to keep them from making trouble. They were why the Boardwalk didn’t have beggars, or addicts hanging around. Because now they all had jobs as enforcers to watch out for themselves. At sub minimum wage, it was actually cheaper than hiring real guards to beat them all up.

I walked away from the Boardwalk, and not two streets away from the nice seafront was literal human garbage.

"Hi," I said, walking past Mush.

"Hey," he said.

"Everything changed places again, can you tell me where Redmond Bricks is?"

"Over there," he said, pointing a banana peel.

Oh, it was THAT giant abandoned Warehouse with a Redmond Bricks sign outside of it. The Coil was watching me again. Brian was standing outside, occaisionally glancing at the Coil and checking his watch.

I walked over to him.

“Hey,” he said, “Lisa said you’d arrived. I thought you had school.”

"Is that her power?"

"No, she was just looking out the window to watch a giraffe walking past when she spotted you."

"Giraffe's are spotted, I'm not."

"When she saw you?"

"Pigs are saw."

"When she oogled you?" Brian said. He was sweating a little, but not from the pressure of my donut exploding stare.

"Better."

"But yeah, I thought you had school?"

"I thought you had school," I said, utilising the ultimate technique in my arsenal of retorts.

"I did't want to do that boring repetitive stuff anymore. All that happened was people calling me ugly while they tore off my shirt and savaged me in the locker room with their eyes."

"Same, really," I said, sparing a forlorn moment of longing. Maybe there was a world, a chance, where instead of being bullied I had had three girlfriends. Yeah right, and pigs couldn't fly.

I saw Brian was wearing different clothes than what he had been wearing earlier in the morning, which is normally a sign of a pretentious chump but on him it made him seem classy and more attractive for some reason.

Alec was waiting, leaning against the back of a couch, as we entered the living room. He was wearing tight shorts and an overly large shirt, a sign of virility and feminine power amongst his fae kin.

"Alec and I were just..." Brian said.

"Sparring," Alec said.

"Can I watch?" I said.

"Why don't you play a video game?" Brian said.

"Ok."

"No no, she can watch," Alec said.

Brian was fit. He wasn't big like a prisoner or a bodybuilder. It was streamlined. You could see the lines of his biceps through his tight cotton shirt, the definition of his chest.

Alec draped himself about Brian like Salmacis about Hermaphroditus, like that snake from Canto 25 of Dante's Inferno about Agnello, like Brian was literally anything in Labyrinth and Alec was David Bowie. Things continued in that vein, with Brian luxuriating in the feeling of those tender hands sneaking up through the bottom of his shirt to caress him.

There was such a size difference. Brian was so much taller and defined yet vulnerable, Alec so frail and yet so commanding.

Lisa’s voice just behind me startled me, tearing my eyes away from the furious and terrible sparring Alec was inflicting on Brian. “Keep your panties on, boys, we’re robbing a bank.”


	20. 3.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Undersiders plan a bank heist.

"Not a boy," I said, smiling a little.

Lisa still had Phone tapping their foot behind her. That feisty yet loveable and good natured bitch had arrived just behind her, and stood in stark contrast to Lisa. Just the starkest. No attention paid to her short in as yet undefined ways hair. The littlest of the shrunken van sized beasts, the one-eyed, one horned Oxford Comma, trailed after her.

"Oh come on," Lisa said. "It's that or I steal someone else's credit."

"I nearly got credit for Lung," I grumbled.

"Oh dang, Lung has good credit," Lisa said. "My power told me that," she added, for the benefit of any complete thickos in the audience. She was smiling like a kid who just got a pare of fuzzy slippers for Christmas.

“It’s a horrible payoff for the amount of risk involved. There’s like, loads of named heroes in this city, and even if we're ignoring the nameless dozen or so heroes that never actually come up, we’re almost guaranteed to get into a fight. Hell, it would be so boring if we got away without fighting any heroes, that we're figuratively guaranteed to get into a fight.”

"So?" Butch said.

"So we might lose," Brian said, doing his best to keep a straight face.

I snickered a little. Alec made a funny face. Butch cleared her throat.

Cashmere let out a "Naaa," and that was all it took to set the lot of us laughing. When we'd all recovered, we were about to start seriously talking again, but Brian whiped a tear from his eye, and he said, "No but what if we do lose?" and we all descended into howling, raucous bleating.

Alec said, “I kind of want to actually do this now."

"Same," Butch said.

"I just want to stick it to the establishment," I said. "Fuck those sub prime loan lending banks, they're the reason the economy sucks, not dead boats."

"Aside from capes?" Lisa said, smugly.

"Aside from capes!" I amended. "Fuck capes too!"

"Hear hear!" Alec and Butch said.

"And what about that one evil robot that kills anyone that tries to make the world a better place?" Lisa said, smuglier.

"Similar stuff before." Brian said.

"Brian said similar stuff before before," Lisa said. "Right before we hit that casino last week, in an incident completely unrelated to that large azian man who was angry with us for stealing from him. The boss wants us to do something very big at a very specific time."

"I'm listening," Alec said.

"So I say we steal from a bank, and I secretly steal more from a bank."

"Why?"

"It'll be important later," Lisa said, waving off my concerns. I forgot to say, I was the person that said that last why. That was me. "For now, we need to go big, and do something noone can ignore. We rob the biggest bank in Brockton."

"That's the biggest bank in Brockton," I said, for the benefit of anyone listening in.

"Given jurisdictions, the Protectorate won't do anything because the Wards have got it covered, and New Wave won't do anything because the Wards have got it covered. But, the Wards are the Wards, so they don't got it covered. Are you with me so far?"

"Not really," Butch said.

"Then you're against me," Lisa said. "The Wards are all useless, so we'll win, and then we'll take their cred. Yes Taylor?"

I kept my hand up. "Is cred the same as credit?"

"Yes. Now if there's no more questions, do we want to dunk on the Wards for the rest of the morning?"

We all nodded in agreement.

"Sure," Brian said. "Let's go down the list. Aegis?"

"If he's straight I'm a goat," Alec said. "And his power's lame too. And how does he even fly? With a flap of his bum?"

"Good one," I said, not wanting to not say anything for a while.

"Number two," Brian said, holding two fingers up in a way that would be rude if he wasn't American. "Clockblocker. Let it be known I hate fucking people who mess with time. I could describe his power but it takes too long and its all a load of bullshit anyway."

"Number three," Brian said, "Is Vista. Blah blah blah young capes have stronger powers."

"Young capes have stronger powers?" I said.

"No, they don't. Its just all the ones you'll ever meet will have stronger power. There are other ones that mean this isn't a rule. They just don't exist."

"I see," I said, writing "Young Capes Have Strong Powers" on a piece of paper. That bit was in quotation marks because I said it aloud really slowly too to tell anyone watching that I was writing that down.

"Kid Win sucks and is lame!" Butch said.

"Hey!" Brian said. "I was gonna say that.

"I was gonna say something different but now I'm not gonna," Lisa said, smugliest.

"Triumph," Brian said. "Has a-"

"More like Kid Lose," Butch said.

"We've moved on," Brian said.

"Well I wasn't listening," Butch said.

"We're talking about Triumph?"

"More like Untriumph," Butch said.

"That's better," Brian said, giving Butch a thumbs up and a retweet. "Next is Gallant, he's fucking Glory Girl so you hope he has super strength or something, he makes you feel sad and he can fly too I guess. And that leaves Shadowstalker, bloodthirsty bitch."

"Hmm?" Butch said.

"Not you. That one with the cool mask and the dreadlocks."

"She shot Brian once," Alec said. "It completely ruined the upholstery. We had to steal a new couch from Lung."

"So that's why he wanted to kill you all," I said, finally getting it.

"Yeah Shadow Stalker just snipes you while invisible," Alec said. "And her arrows go through anything at close range, she can't be hit, she's immune to fall damage, and she one hits you in melee. So we're all just going to hide in one of Brian's fart clouds until she gets bored."

"Sick," Lisa said. "That's all of them."

"What about New Wave?" Butch said.

"What about New Wave? New Wave sucks too. There. We just planned a bank heist before noon."

I looked at the digital clock hanging on the wall. It was leaking numbers all over the floor. Somehow I didn't think that was a good thing.

"Is that a good thing?" I asked Lisa.

"No."

999 999 999

Wormfic, a web fanfiction by J.C. Transfeminine fanfiction author


	21. 3.4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor speaks to her dad for a change.

"Yes, of course its time you nervous titch. Get on with it!" I saw a light in the corner of the room. Just as well this loser hung up on me, my waste of a father was home.

I definitely didn't want my father to see Phone. If he knew I'd been chatting with them, he'd want to warn Phone to stay away from me because he was bigoted against Phones. Or, worse, he'd want to get Phone's number so he could check up on me and my friends. God forbid what would happen if he found out I had Myspace, and the less said about what would happen if he found my tumblr the better.

Brian had tried to give me three identical mobiles in the morning but they'd all been nokias so I'd thrown them away and just taken Phone with me. Sadly, they were nokias, so they survived even when I'd used my full power to throw them at a brick wall really hard. Must be so hard to make a mobile like that, huh Apple? I'd gone with Brian to the loft to spar this morning. The way I figured it, I wasn't going to school, and sitting at home feeling miserable was my dad's job. The bank robbery was Thursday. Friday though? On Friday I was going to the art gallery to scream back at the paintings. Then I was going to stand around holding a frame around my face and screaming at people who looked at me. With any luck, they'd be complimentaling me for being an amazing and subversive symbol of anti-establishment protest, instead of screaming back. Kevin Norton knows what I was supposed to do on weekends now that I was done with my costume. I needed to get more hobbies. That or start making a sidekick out of papier mache. Maybe even... a bug?

I'd spent the day with the group, doing various things that tied into them as characters, like ignoring Grue, planning things with Tattletale, and shopping for knives and handcuffs with Regent. I'd gotten a really sharp one with a satisfying click when you opened it, and now I was ready to unleash my inner 1950s greaser. Except girl now. Genderswapped 1950s was a perfectly fine aesthetic. You know you'd want to see a young John Travolta in a poodle skirt. Anyway, Rachel hadn't been there. That was Butch's name. Rachel. Good old shrunken monster walking Rache.

We'd avoided the subject of the robbery, because its a bit shit if you hang out and spend all your time talking about how much fun you're going to have tomorrow. Instead we'd untangled all their christmas lights while watching some of Alec's movies from Earth Alf, or Boring Earth. Ever since Professor Haywire had turned a Blockbuster Video's return box into a portal between worlds, Earth Interesting had been getting Boring Earth's inferior movies and selling them to pretentious jerks who already bought the special edition and the director's cut. Did you know they didn't even have Darth Moi Moi Bad in their Attack of the Clones?

By the time my dad got in, I'd cooked myself some rabbit.

"Hey," my dad said. "Smells good."

"There was a man sized rabbit in my room, so I killed it."

"Good," he said.

"I put its clothes in the bin and the rest of the meat in the freezer."

"Yousa have done well mesa Padawan," my dad said.

"I was just watching that this morning," I said, before I could stop myself. "Um, in class. For film studies."

My dad smiled at me. "I'll ask you about that some more once I've changed out of these work clothes.

Damn it. I was going to have to make up a whole story about going to school now, unless I wanted to tell him that his daughter was a high school dropout. He'd pout and tell me my mom was a high school dropout, and that was how she'd become a politically active feminist, and then I'd tell him that she'd been a college dropout, and then we'd both be sad because we'd remember that she'd been dead for about... four? Four years.

My dad had changed out of his khakis and pith helmet into a wifebeater and boxers.

"So what's this about film studies?"

"It was just a free class where we all got to watch Star Wars, but it was the crappy Earth Alf version, and now I have to write a page about it for tomorrow."

Smooth Taylor, smooth. He wouldn't suspect a thing.

"And your girlfriend's name is?"

"Dad!" I belched.

"Sorry, I won't keep asking. Its just nice you have an ethnically and sexually diverse band of friends now."

"Ok, just don't scare me like that."

"But is there a girl?"

"Dad!"

"Can you at least tell me about them?"

"Lisa's a smart blonde whose outward confidence masks her uncertainties, Alec is an effeminate Canadian man, Brian is a muscly black man and Rachel has short hair."

"Like, how short?"

"Like, short, I don't know," I said. I didn't know hair lengths, and I didn't have to it I wasn't about to get my hair cut anytime soon. I didn't think I was ever going to get it cut again, that thing was the only thing feminine about this frog.

My dad stayed quiet, respecting my boundaries for once. It made me uncomfortable. You wouldn't like me when I was uncomfortable.

"I need fresh air, I'm leaving now," I said, before backflipping out the kitchen window.

I took the same route that I took in my morning hops, downtown. But then I took a different route, and that led me towards another run down part of Brockton Bay. Once upon a time, Brockton Bay was bustling. Now, it was busking. I passed the Ferry, a symbol of my dad's inability to let go of the past and accept the present state of affairs as well as an example of the general state of the city. Dad believed that having a ferry magically created a middle class, but I believed that the middle class was a capitalist invention that discouraged working solidarity.

The city spent money to make the building look pretty on the outside, like the city. On the inside it was rotted, like the city. All the copper wiring had been stolen, like my innocence. I'd wanted somewhere private to change into my costume, and naturally had picked a place like this instead of a phone booth. With a twirl of my hips and a pose, I summoned my jacket and mask to me. Then I was free to head to the secret meeting place.

It was an observation deck, supposedly getting a perfect view of the bay in all its glory. Shame someone put a fucking fortress in the middle of the water. It shined in all its poncy art school glory, surrounded by a soap bubble like someone had watched Doctor Who a little too recently when they were designing it.

I gave it the finger. Who the fuck built shit like that instead of reforming the school system? Was paying Calvert Construction millions in commission to build it worth it? Was paying a cabal of private parahuman paramilitary contractors for a forcefield and surface to air missiles to protect a police headquarters worth it?

"Fuck you!" I shouted.

"Beep," a voice speaking metal detector broke the silence.

"I wasn't talking to you," I said, turning to face the idiot I'd summoned here.

He looked different to how I'd seen him last time. That was Fire Fighter Armsmaster, this was Office Drama Action Armsmaster, with file filing action.

"But fuck you too. I'm right, you're wrong. Now do this thing for me or I'm going to hate you forever."


	22. 3.5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor meets up with Armsmaster and defeats the cold unthinking arm of the state in a duel of wits of the fates.

"Beep," Armsmaster said.  
  
The tone gave me pause.  
  
"I'm gonna go join the Undersiders so like, yeah can you not arrest me right now?"  
  
"Beep," Armsmaster said, raising his halberd a little.  
  
"Cool, see you later."  
  
"Beep!"  
  
"Oh come on, this is the only thing I need!"  
  
"Beep," Armsmaster said. He gave me a moment to let it sink in.  
  
"Yo, that was-"  
  
He didn’t give me a chance to speak. He bowled over me, his voice rising as he spoke, "Boop!"  
  
"Oh sick, who?"  
  
He crossed his arms.  
  
"What? I thought they were just charming rogues who ultimately did more good than harm but here you are saying they're actually villains. I wanna know more. I didn't think I was joining the bad guys."  
  
Armsmaster put his head in one hand and shook it.  
  
"Well fine, I'm going to go descend into a career of murderous evil."  
  
"Boop," Armsmaster said.  
  
"No, you can't arrest me, I haven't done anything yet!"  
  
"Beep Bloop," Armsmaster said, sounding final. Damn it, why was he being so unreasonable?  
  
"Um, what if I joined the Empire instead?" I said, nervously. Damn it and Hellfire, I'd only gone and stuck my foot in my mouth (Not literally, though I'd tried a while ago and I could if I wanted) again. And I was letting my head get stuck in loops again, words spent on my own spiralling spiral into spirals. At least I wasn't thinking in other people's thoughts again. **That's what you think, Kiddo.** (Gosh dang it. We'd need a new editor if the thought bubbles kept up like this.)  
  
I looked up at Armsmaster, and he down at me. Armsmaster made a happy whistling noise and wiped the condensation from his brow before it could get rusty. And then he waved me on my merry way.  
  
I couldn't believe that worked. I mean, meeting him was totally pointless but now I was completely free to absolutely rob the fullness of that bank.  
  
333 333 333


	23. |.π

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stuck in traffic.

"Its all just a game," Lisa said. "Like Cops and Robbers."  
  
It was raining cats and dogs outside, and while the cats were landing on their feet to Rachel's distress most of the dogs weren't surviving the fall. The van lurched over another bump as we inched forwards in the gridlock.  
  
"Who the fuck plays Cops and Robbers?" I said.  
  
"I don't know, kids. The point is," Lisa said.  
  
"Don't they have any video games?" Alec said.  
  
"Or van sized creatures?" Rachel asked.  
  
"The point is," Lisa said. "The point is that grown people wearing costumes and stopping bank robbers is silly."  
  
"It really isn't," Brian said. "Not compared to talking donuts or walking phones."  
  
"You leave Phone out of this!" I hissed.  
  
"Wearing clothes instead of dead animal skins is silly and people like me and you, we go out for fun-"  
  
The van bumped again, and Lisa nearly bit her tongue.  
  
"Look, maybe we have an agenda or some goals, but at the end of the day we don't really threaten the status quo. We stick to it, like Zac Effron said."  
  
"No he didn't," Rachel muttered.  
  
"And then you have the people who are messed in the head, bitch," Lisa said, turning around to glare at Rachel.  
  
"Nicer than you," Rachel muttered again, as soon as Lisa turned her eyes back to the road, turning on the windscreen wipers to dislodge an Oxford Comma with its butt on the windscreen.  
  
"And then you have monsters like the Slaughterhouse 9."  
  
Lightning crackled at the very mention of them, likely frying a few falling dogs. Or not, I don't know how lightning works, I'm just setting the scene here.  
  
"Or Troll 2,"  
  
Lightning crackled at the very mention of him.  
  
"Or Genoscythe The Not Safe For Work," I said, trying to get a good rule of three in on this.  
  
"I was going to say the Sleeper," Lisa said.  
  
"What about Heartbreaker?" Alec said.  
  
"Glazed Hiney?" Brian asked.  
  
"The Slaughterhouse 9?" Rachel said, and lightning crackled again.  
  
"No, I already said... I already said them."  
  
"I wasn't listening," Rachel said.  
  
"You were before!"  
  
"And then you called me a bitch again."  
  
"Bitch that's your codename!" Lisa half said half shouted.  
  
"There you go again!"  
  
"You're wearing it on your shirt!"  
  
"And you're saying it like its an insult!"  
  
"How do you not say bitch like an insult?" I asked, hoping to defuse the tension. It was a legit question too, remember that I'd just gotten out of a largely verbal campaign of bullying, and had been called bitch at least once a day.  
  
"Hi Bitch, how you doing?" Rachel said.  
  
"Hi, bitch," I said, trying it.  
  
"You did it again!"  
  
"The point is!" Lisa shouted, "Heroes need loser villains that aren't that dangerous so they can get practice in and they don't have to fill all the time with interpersonal drama. We're the monster of the week."  
  
"That'd be a good name for a cape," Alec said.  
  
"Well its probably already taken," Lisa said, her voice filled with resentment. "If I ever find the Rachel who took Contessa before me, I swear..."  
  
"So we're the bad guys, but its okay because so long as we don't really threaten the heroes too much and they're all fine by the next episode?"  
  
"Oh god no," Brian said. "Go as hardcore as you want, drown a Rachel in spiders, they're just gonna get healed anyway."  
  
"Aw sick," I said. I stuck a hand in the pocket of my jacket to check my pocket knife was there. I slid it out and started clicking it open and shut. I needed to do something with this energy and anticipation.  
  
"I fed Aegis' spleen to Soulless," Rachel said.  
  
“So what you're saying is, compared to the psychos and the monsters out there, its in the city's best interests to keep villains like us on the streets as an alternative to just going Lawnmower Man on everyone that doesn't like you?" I said. "And that's why you get to escape jail three times for free?"  
  
"Fouls count for two," Lisa said. "But otherise, yeah, pretty much. That's why people like us and those losers that dressed up as a hedgehog and a fox and stole people's wedding rings never get any Karma." The van went over another bump, causing Lisa's head to slam into the steering wheel.  
  
"Wear your seatbelt," Brian said.  
  
"Being a villain means you never need seatbelts!" Lisa proclaimed, peeling her face from the wheel. "Anyway, this is our stop," she said, swerving the van off the road and onto the pavement, knocking the pedestrians aside like the people of Horsell common before the wrath of the heat ray, like sophisticated references to classical literature before simple and pedestrian ones, like bowling pins before a bowling ball.  
  
Holy shit, if I'd known how much fun this stuff was I'd have gone ahead with it way sooner.  
  
"Let's rob a fucking bank!" I yelled, holding my knife high.


	24. 3.7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Be crimes do crimes. Rob banks cos why not.

Brian, which is to say Grue, which was to say Brian, was out of the van first. Edge and shadows dripped from him like locker juice from a locker, except up instead of down. He'd told me about his mask but I hadn't been listening at the time. Something about buying another one.

He said something and I nodded like I could hear him. He was wearing a motorcycle helmet, nobody could understand a thing in that. I caught sight of another bug circling his edgy stink lines and shot it a mean look. The bug caught fire, dissolving into ashes that were lost in the dark darkness of dark. Looks like mean look was somewhat effective.

I caught a glimpse of Tattletale's backside as she sidled into view. I had to admit, I was starting to see the appeal of a skintight costume. If I'd been even slightly comfortable with my own body, I might have tried pulling it off. Maybe with a skirt or something on top. Or baggy shorts. She had a pair of eyes drawn on her costume. On the back and the front, not where you're thinking you creep, just because she was wearing skintight leather doesn't mean you're supposed to think about stuff like that, honestly.

Regent was off to one side. He'd had his mask and costume made of the same foam that those futuristic but uncomfortable beds were made of. Apparently it was as tough as papier mache, but I'd be the judge of that. The way the shirt exposed his delicate neckline? The tightness of his jeggings? Apparently it was to mislead and disarm opponents, but having seen him sparring there was nothing misleading about it. He twirled his cane like a person twirling a cane would, if they were flamboyant as f.

Tattletale tiptoed over to the keypad, and held up a hand. She stared at the keypad, likely to analyse the thickness of the seat eating bacteria layer that had grown over the numbers so that her power would tell her the code to get in. Then she pressed the keys one at a time. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 1. I would have never guessed that.

"Oh shit," Tattletale said.

"Did you set off a secret alarm?" I asked, worried we'd already been rumbly jumbled.

"I forgot my gun," Tattletale said.

"I didn't," Phone said, cocking the hammer on his Heckler <3 Koch.

"Okay," Tattletale said. "Okay. Stick to the plan, I'll just use this banana."

She pulled a banana free from her utility belt and held it like a gun.

Rachel joined us, followed by her three van sized creatures, which had been grown back to the point where they were the size of a motorcycle. They were ugly, and about the size of a motorcycle, with teeth like broken ashtrays and spines like the real life consequence of those girls from the front of comic books.

Bitch for her part was wearing a fur rimmed coat and a mask of Margaret Thatcher.

"What happened to the dog mask?" Tattletale hissed.

"Its a bitch mask," Rachel said. I smiled beneath my mask, which still frowned the eternal frown of that Taylor who had been bullied all that time.

We made our way into the back halls of the bank. Right this very second, someone watching the CCTV was probably thinking they were on drugs. We only passed a three empty offices, but it felt like a dozen.

We reached the front lobby of the bank, and Rachel's motorcycle sized creatures started barking at everything and anything that moved, including the ceiling fans. Brian did nothing. I almost forgot my part of the plan, but then Lisa pointed her banana in the air and made gun noises with her mouth.

"Nobody move!" Lisa said, turning the banana on those pathetic, snivelling masses. "Nobody say a word!"

"A word!" a guard at the back said, reaching for his gun.

I stared at him, wobbling my slightly loose mask as fast as I could until the motion became a blur. The guard screamed and flapped around a bit as his glasses melted, but he wasn't dead so its totally okay. I looked from one guard to the next but they were all innocently whistling and kicking their guns away now, or else putting their glasses back in their pockets.

And Brian had just wanted to blind everyone and then take them out with his kung fu skills. That's why he was the boring one. Alec on the other hand, Alec was laughing his best villain laugh. If mine didn't sound like a mildly naughty donkey, I'd have joined him.


	25. 3.89

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Wards arrive to stop the bank robbery!

"Any trouble?" Grue askimalised the Tattletalinator.  
  
"The balance on this banana's off," she said, keeping it trained on a crying woman.  
  
"I'll take over," Regent said, holding out a hand and taking the banana for himself.  
  
Tattletale led me, Grue, and Rachel to the vault door.  
  
"I was going to unlock this with my power but like, I mean, I guess you're here Taylor," she said.  
  
I nodded, and with a flex of my mighty and unconquerable powers I made the vault door vanish.  
  
"And then we were going to get Bitch's dogs to carry it," Lisa continued.  
  
"There. That's how you say it without making it sound like an insult," Rachel said.  
  
"Whatever, Bitch," Lisa said. She shook her head slowly. "I mean, I guess the rest of us don't even need to be here do we?"  
  
I shook my head slowly, making a funny face beneath my mask, and set about stuffing all the money I could into my bottomless pockets. Rachel grabbed like, one stack of bills and put it into her bra in that thing that I swore people only did in movies because that was probably uncomfortable, not that I'd know with a bra size of "Cross your fingers and hope". Alass, having a body I'd like wasn't within the insane variety of uses for my powers. Like making vault doors vanish and reappear a few hundred feet above Emma's pony.  
  
Grue grunted, a sudden noise that made me jump. I turned around to look at him and he grunted again. I grunted back. Rachel grunted. It was a noise like someone hadn't heard what a grunt really was and was just trying to copy us. We didn't know what it was, but something was getting as all worked up, we just couldn't tell yet. We needed to seem big and scary.  
  
Tattletale suddenly turned and stared into the air, like a van sized creature when some small fuzzy red animal was nearby. She frowned sciuridaelily. "I smell failure."  
  
"I smell it too," Grue bellowed.  
  
"They come!" Tattletale yelled.  
  
"They come!" I yelled, flexing my powers. In a flash we were outside the bank.  
  
Our opposition was lined up along the zebra crossing, moonwalking to intimidate us just like beetles did before their battles. It was a fierce sight. Aegis, with his tan skin and the target on his back. Gallant, with his shining armour and the target on his back. Most of them had targets on the back of their costumes really.  
  
Grue grunted in his echoing echoing echoing, reverberating reverberating reverberating voice voice voice. He pointed off to one side, and I followed his finger to see...  
  
"Who're they?" I said, pointing in the same direction.  
  
"Huh?" Tattletale said.  
  
"That one there, the one who's big in a different way to how Grue's big. You know, with the kind of bulk that made you think powers are at work. With the muscle laden arms bigger around than my thighs, the one that could probably crush cans between their pecs. The one whose costume's little more than purple spandex with a diamond print and a full-face mask with a crystal on the forehead. The one not wearing body armor."  
  
"I think that's Browbeat," Lisa said. She didn't sound sure.  
  
"Hey Browbeat!" I yelled.  
  
Browbeat waved back.  
  
"Your costume sucks!"  
  
I turned back to the rest of the team, and started whispering. "I think I demoralised them."  
  
"Nah, the rest of the team's fine," Tattletale said.  
  
"Not them them, them them," I said, jabbing a finger back to Browbeat, who was getting a pat on the back from Clockblocker.  
  
"Browbeat's nonbinary?" Rachel asked.  
  
"No, I just don't want to presume," I said.  
  
"My power says they're a they, but they're more than ok with he too," Lisa said, before her face lit up like a Christmas tree. "And that there's a sale on for purple latex!"  
  
"That was kind of rude thought," Grue said. I nodded.  
  
"Hey Browbeat!" I yelled, before realising I was still huddling with the team. I unhuddled, and turned back around.  
  
"Hey Browbeat!" I yelled. "Did you sew that yourself? Cos the stitching is really good! I just don't think purple is your colour!"  
  
"I told him!" Clockblocker yelled back, cupping his hands around his mouth.  
  
"We needed it to balance our palette!" Vista yelled. Of course she'd say that, she was the one wearing white and neon green.  
  
"Do we have to keep yelling?" Regent yelled.  
  
"What?" Gallant yelled.  
  
"Come over here so we don't have to yell!" Regent yelled.  
  
I can imagine how it looked to the Wards. One moment they were standing in the rain, waiting with a tense readiness. The next, they were walking towards us with a tense readiness. The next, they were falling over in the rain, fumbling with a tense unsteadiness. The next, they were on their backs in the rain, waiting to be turned back onto the right side with a tense readiness.  
  
Like all beetles fans, their greatest weakness was being turned on to their backs. And that was exactly what Regent had done, with a plan that was sheer elegance in a thrift shop cocktail dress. He chuckled dramatically, flouncing atop Brian in triumph.  
  
I can imagine how it looked to us, because I was us. One moment they were lying on their backs in the rain, waiting to be turned back over to the right side with a tense readiness. The next, they were standing back up in the rain, with a tense readiness.  
  
"My god!" Regent exclaimed. "They're not beetles fans at all!"  
  
Of course. They'd been walking across a crosswalk single file, but they'd been moon walking. Moon walking. Walking on the moon! Of course the Wards would be Police fans. And we'd fallen for it just like a canary in a coalmine.  
  
"That's it, I'm getting Aegis' spleen this time," I said, but Rachel was already stepping forwards for her turn to attack, moving her hand towards her mouth in preparation for a whistle.  
  
"Freeze!" Tattletale said, and Rachel went very still, her mouth open and two fingers against her lips.  
  
"There's something wrong with Clockblocker's costume!" Tattletale announced, pointing at Clockblocker.  
  
She was right. What sort of loser would cover himself in clocks, especially when his power was just stopping things. A stop sign or a red traffic light would have been much more appropriate. Unless... Unless that wasn't Clockblocker at all.  
  
"You're not Clockblocker!" Tattletale yelled, pointing at Clockblocker. Rachel fell over, having spent too long leaning into her whistle dramatically.  
  
"Yes I am," Clockblocker said, unconvincingly.  
  
Tattletale tapped me on the shoulder. "I yelled a little too loud there, and I don't want to hurt my voice, I'm going to go hack the gigadrive on their duplex's mainframe."  
  
"Ok," I said. Tattletale cartwheeled once, fell over, and then walked the rest of the way back to the back of the bank.  
  
"Where were we?" I asked Brian.  
  
"I just yelled, "Oh no you aren't!" at Clockblocker and he said "Oh yes I am.""  
  
"Damn, he's good. Let me give something a try."  
  
I cupped my hands together about the mouth of my costume, and I yelled "Hey Aegis, what time is it?"  
  
Immediately, Clockblocker looked at one of his many clocks, before stopping himself.  
  
"Yeah Clockblocker is really Aegis," Brian said. "I think I'm just gonna get Rachel to feed him to her van sized creatures." He gave Hellhound, who I have been calling Butch or Rachel for some time now, a kick, and she gave a whistle. Immediately three van sized creatures pounced upon Aegis and set apart disemboweling him with their teeth.  
  
"You fools!" the fake Aegis said. "Now they're distracted, all I have to do is touch them and-"  
  
I grabbed a gold brick out of my pocket and hocked it at his head, and it made a big old dong noise as conked him on the noggin. He was out like a pocket full of bricks. I'd won.  
  
Sick.


	26. 3.01

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Wards fight the Undersiders with all the power of the powers at their powers' disposals.

The battlefield was chaos. Slightly more so than usual. Patches of darkness covered everything, where Brian had ran around hiding and then going boo. Vista had warped everything she could, to the point where rain was going horizontally into my face, horizontally into Regent's face, and vertically into a stray seagull that had spooked Vista and was now stuck in a loop of up and down gravity. A car had burst into flames after Kid Win had tried shooting lasers through warped physics, shot himself in the face, and crashed his hover skateboard into it.

Aegis and Clockblocker were dealt with, so I figured I'd try my luck at helping and hocked another brick, this time at Vista. My brick curved back around midflight and was gonna hit me in the face, but I unthrew it, which is to say I caught it, and then I uncaught it at myself. This time it missed Vista by an inch or so and killed that seagull instead.

Hellhound rode her jeep sized creature, Rimmer, into the fray, wielding a golf club in one hand and holding the reigns in the other. Vista raised a hand, causing Rimmer to run straight into a brick wall, which made Hellhound get flung off her saddle and over the wall like a person who didn't believe in seatbelts out the top of a convertible that had just driven into a wall. She screamed as she flew past Gallant, getting a glancing blow to the knight's cup with her golf club before she landed right next to Vista. She swung her club again and missed cos the club was all bent back from hitting Gallant.

As she stopped to try and bend it back into position, Kid Win managed to work his way out of the wreckage. I took aim and tossed another brick at him, cursing myself for using such an expensive form of attack. The brick bounced off of Kid Win's helmet, skimmed off of the crashed Rimmer, went through Browbeat's legs, and hit Hellhound right in the back. Damn it. If only there was something else I could do.

Vista made a smug grin, only for a skull faced biker to walk out of the little patch of darkness to the right of her. She turned around just in time for Grue to punch her in the face. She fell backwards into the anti seagull fountain and was promptly flung off into the air like an unconscious pre teen on a trampoline.

"Shit, Kid Win's got his ult!" Regent said, pointing at the Kid. And he was right, Kid Win was floating up into the air and glowing while pieces of a giant gun started to appear in front of him. Whatever it was, it didn't look interruptable. It soared into the air like a living seagull, but made of metal and with a fifteen foot barrel. It powered up, aimed at me, and fired a series of devastating shots right into Gallant's back as the knight careened past.

Regent cackled, but then the gun started to turn towards him and he started trying to zig zag towards one of Grue's smokescreens. If only there was something I could do.

Aegis screamed his head off as a buick sized Oxford Comma ate his Brockton colon. Grue walked over to where Vista was on the ground and started punching her in the face some more. Gallant landed on top of Hellhound right as she was standing up again.

If only there was something I could do, I thought, stroking the wet and dripping chin of my costume with my poorly fitted plastic gloves.

"What's so confusing, Psycho?" a voice from behind me said.

I pointed up at Kid Win. Kid Win waved back.

"I don't know if I can do anything about that," I said.

Kid Win fired off a series of devastating shots, then paused as Regent entered fog of war, then fired off a series of devastating shots again again when Regent accidentally ran out the other side of the cloud.

That's when something heavy hit my head.

\--  
r


	27. Three Point A Good Point for Me to Stop for Now.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Dallon sisters show up and are rather rude to Taylor and Lisa just because they robbed a bank and melted a man's glasses.

Warning, today's chapter might actually be close to being as hard to read as Worm is sometimes. Transphobia, an ableist slur, and the kind of slightly played for laughs violence that I should probably just keep to those stories I keep writing that rely entirely on stuff like that. I suppose the thing about Worm is how subjective things are. Maybe someone being forced to stay still in a room with a parent they don't want to talk to is horrible. Maybe someone being tortured forever. Maybe someone having their memory wiped. Worm is a beloved story but one that a lot of fanfic enjoys without touching on that darkness. Idk. I kinda creeped myself out with how I was writing this chapter and broke one of the usual rules I have with DADA where I don't ever edit a chapter once the chapter's written.  
  
I feel weird for how long a lot of stuff never really got to me, but hey, I'm weird. And dumb. And I'm following a hard act to do so with with DADA. This is a fic that I wrote two years and a bit ago, at a very different point in my life. I don't figure I'll have it in me to keep this once a day upload pace forever. And lets be real, even if the chapters are a thousand words or so it is the height of hubris to assume one can make something vaguely as long as Worm. To have reached even this long is a little miracle really, I just sorta decided to continue this on a whim with the same once a day no editing no beta readers philosophy.  
  
So thanks for reading this nonsensical story that I sorta kinda hate, and this is going to be the last chapter for a while. Maybe I'll write an arc in advance. Maybe I'll write the whole thing in advance. But I'm just gonna chip away at DADA a little in the background, maybe update some other fic or something. Have one last slice of DADA for now.  
  
999 999 999  
  
I jittered and juttered about, my hand caught in the door frame. Another heavy thing, or possibly just the same heavy thing again, hit me again and again, trying to get me to stop. It managed to dislodge me, catapulting me across the room like a cow from the parapets, like Kermit the frog puppet in a gif. I crashed into an office chair and started it spinning. The chair was relatively comfortably comfortable if I ignored the way the room was spinning.  
  
An angry girl with frizzy hair by the doors of the bank tromped her way across the room towards me, dragging a fire extinguisher with her. I lost sight of her, then caught sight of her again. Cos the chair was spinning. She hit me with the fire extinguisher again, sending me spinning the other way.  
  
"What-"  
  
"The-"  
  
"Fuck," I said, in three parts cos I was only talking when I was facing her. She said nothing cos she was busy texting. There was no way I was going to let her hit me in the face with an extinguisher and then text her friends about it. I planted my feet on the floor, stopping the violent spinning. I went on the offensive, starting to scootle along using the chair. She retreated, dropping her extinguisher to keep texting. I accelerated my scootle to a full blown roll.  
  
"Who do you think you are!" I brayed, not like a moose. Then I brayed like a moose.  
  
"I'm-" she said, but then one of the windows at the side of the bank exploded, sending glass everywhere. A blur of white and gold and a red letter L crashed into the lobby hard enough to send fragments of tile flying everywhere. One doofed the girl in the side of her hand, sending her mobile spinning off into the crowd of frightened citizens.  
  
The figure straight-but-not-that-way-ened, dusted herself off and turned to glare at me. Almost casually she reached out, grabbed Phone, and snapped them in half over her knee before tossing the halves aside.  
  
It’s humiliating to admit, but I cried. I know I'm supposed to be hard, but nobody deserved that.  
  
"You killed Phone!" I yelled, pointing at her.  
  
“Hey sis,” Glory Girl said, then she tilted her head to one side, to look at the brown haired girl, “You okay?”  
  
"And I'm not cis!" I hissed.  
  
"Sorry about your friend. I thought he was a table," Glory Girl said, glaring at a stray office table. The table shook with fear, hiding behind a chair that had his arm around her. "And I was talking to my sister."  
  
The girl with her phone, who could only be Panacea, Glory Girl's sister, smirkled like a frecklelled fox.  
  
Glory Girl started towards me, but I pointed a finger gun towards her sister. She stopped, and lifted her hands into a calming position.  
  
"Count yourself lucky I can't touch your face, or I'd give you a heart attack," Panacea said.  
  
"I'm wearing a mask," I said.  
  
"Or turn you into some gross fat disgusting fat obese fat slovenly fat gross-" Panacea continued.  
  
"I made it out of papier mache," I added.  
  
"Man," Panacea hissed. My heart skipped a beat. I didn't know if I backflipped out of my chair or lunged like a crocodile that you thought was just a log of if I just stood up, but I lost a piece of my life there, and I found myself lifting her into the air by the one hand I had about her throat.  
  
"It seems we have a stalemate," Glory Girl said.  
  
I pulled the knife from my pocket with my free hand and made a familiar clicking noise with it.  
  
"I said, it appears we have a stalemate," Glory Girl said. I pivoted my head to look at her.  
  
"Now that you have my sister hostage," Glory Girl added. I tightened my grip on Panacea's neck and pulled the knife towards my forehead.  
  
"My family will be here soon," Glory Girl said, over the gurgle of Panacea choking. I carved a pair of angry looking eyebrows into my mask with which to glare at her. Panacea's hands limply scraped and scratched at my jacket sleeve.  
  
Glory Girl turned her attention to her sister, “I wanted to go to the mall for lunch, but noooo,” Glory Girl said, “You needed to go to the bank.” Panacea gurgled in reply, her limp blows getting limper.  
  
It was then that something purple and yellow cartwheeled into view, "Hey Kiddo."  
  
"Hi," I said faintly, and my superhuman grip loosened a little.  
  
"You doing okay?" Tattletale said from the heap her failed cartwheels had ended in. She ace-ned herself out and dusted herself off.  
  
"No," I said quietly, and Panacea took a deep and gasping breath. "How did you know?" I asked. I was wearing an all over mask after all.  
  
"Because I can read your mind," Tattletale said, putting her finger and her thumb in the shape of an L on her forehead. I smiled a little under the mask.  
  
"Um, actually, no you can't!" Glory Girl said. “The brainpower you’d need to interpret and decode someone’s unique neural patterns would need a head five times the usual size to contain it all."  
  
"That's our Tattletale," I said weakly, and Lisa grinned vulpinely at me.  
  
"True psychics can’t exist," Glory Girl said, with the tone of someone who'd literally just learned this in class earlier in the day. "Scholars say you're wrong and I say you're a retard!"  
  
"Well," Tattletale said weakly. "That's rude."  
  
  
999 999 999  
  
See yall in a few months.


	28. Interlude Lion King 3 1/2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mysterious new narrator takes us through Kayden Anders' interlude, where she rejoins the evil Empire.

Interlude 3 1/2

BANG

That caught your attention, hopefully. The regular narrator couldn't really be arsed with this, seeing as she can't stand fascists. Nor I really, but I feel as though someone ought to fill in. I mean after all there's some real story progression in these interludes that you'd be missing out on otherwise. Personally I'd be fine if it all stopped here again but there's just a few arcs to go until we've hit the beats I'm hoping for and it'd be a damned shame if this story ended before I even got to make an appearance. Tell you what Taylor, what if I picked up the Interludes from now on? I don't think you read them, and I don't really read the main bits.

Anyway, this is listed as Interlude 3 1/2 so strictly speaking its perfectly fine if I just go ahead and slide it in here. Time to set the scene. Alass, we try to keep our chapters short here, so there isn't any time for Theo Door Anders being pathetic and worthless here. Don't worry, I'll get to him later. For now you can rest assured that he spent the entire night staring at a television that was off.

Kayden Anders soared out of her balcony window and out into the night air with all the same subtlety that Director Costa Brown used every time an Endbringer attacked in the middle of an important PRT meeting. She'd been planning to spend the evening inside but the spotlight atop Anders Enterprises was shining a great big red white and black american flag into the air, and that was the signal that America needed her.

Now unfortunately, Kayden was bright and shining, so whenever she was zooming around in the sky almost every single moth and fly in the sky went straight for her. Fortunately, she was hotter than shut up and stop objectifying Nazis. I don't care if you're redeeming her, its weird. I mean, all the power to you if you want to talk about the size of a Slaughterhouserer's rear, but really? The Empire are the real monsters in all this. Anyway, getting off track. Kayden was a bug zapper. That was where the joke was going. And speaking of not knowing where you're going...

Kayden caught a glimpse of her, almost too late. A blonde woman completely covered in splattered bugs was about to fly straight into her. She couldn't brake in time, couldn't steer. Collision was avoided by the narrowest of margins.

"Watch where you're flying!" Kayden shouted back at her, her heart beating a mile a minute.

"Well why don't you slow down you-" the blonde blur shouted through a mouthful of bugs, her voice fading off into the distance along with the big red L on her back.

See? This interlude matches up with that earlier one now. It doesn't add much, but I think we could all do with a few more little tidbits for people to pick up on and smile. Like that whole throughline of mothers driving in Worm. The sight of that red L on the back of Victoria made Kayden frown a little as she flew on like the sad fascist firefly she was. After all of all people, Kayden would know all about learner drivers, wouldn't she?

Sorry, I'm making this into way too much of an editorial. I'll shut up now. I'll let you get on with your comedy about people losing their eyes and yeeting babies. Did I use yeet right? I know Worm's supposed to be 2011 but that's a decade away now and while I was a little cautious about it at first that word is just so much fun to use.

"Kaiser!" Kayden yelled over the top of my meandering narration, smashing through the sliding doors of the balcony of the executive suite of the 88th floor of the Anders Enterprises skyscraper, a thing that all pharmaceutical companies with fascist money were likely to have. Immediately a hundred mirrors and slightly reflective surfaces became shiny enough that they could have been blinding.

“Kayden. It’s been a little while,” Kaiser managed to greet her through the glass of water he was drinking. His ventriloquism was an impressive talent indeed, one picked up from his days on the mean streets of venice as he toured the world, familiarising himself with the ways of his enemy. Poor nonwhite people who didn't have money. Kayden Anders had no doubt her former husband had spent the evening before her arrival brooding behind his desk. He didn't drink because he was too clean and articulate and sophisticated for that, but he tumbled iced water in that thing that you tumble whiskey in, and he'd long picked up a habit of forlornly staring at the moon in a way that the PRT had advised may be dangerous now that the Sleeper was up there.

"What does he have that I don't?" Maxwell P. Anders said.

"What?" Kayden said, not getting what he was on about.

"You're probably wondering why I called you here. It's Armsmaster, Kayden. People are calling Armsmaster Batman."

Kayden shook her head. Not this again. It was why they'd gotten divorced in the first place. He'd said he needed to protect his bachelor mystique so that he could be more relatable.

"Think about it Kayden! I lost my parents to criminals, Kayden. I'm a billionaire! Just one billion, but still. I own a company that I inherited from my traditionally masculine father. I fight crime while wearing a suit of armour and a mask that conceals all of my face, except my recognisable jawline. Yet why, whenever anyone thinks Batman, do they think of that pathetic robot?"

"Because Batman isn't a Nazi?" Kayden ventured.

"I think I hate him Kayden," Max said, ignoring her thoroughly. "He's been haunting my thoughts as surely as the memory of my father's murder. I can see him now, smiling down at me from Valhalla. I only wanted to make him proud Kayden! But he was gunned down in front of me."

"If I rejoin Empire Heil Hitler, will you stop being a dark and brooding figure?" Kayden asked.

"Can I have half my money back?"

"You didn't give me any money. You don't pay child support."

"You said you didn't want to be paid in blood money!" Max yelled, throwing his glass at one of those exceptionally ugly vases that costs more than strictly necessary.

"I said I wanted to be paid in blood money!" Kayden yelled, picking up the nearest table to her and throwing it out of the hole she flew in from. See, another tie between her and Victoria, right there. "The redder the better!"

"Well if you want my blood money so much, why don't you take it all!" Max said, throwing a letter opener at a nordic styled tapestry depicting the saga of his conquest of that giantess wife of his that he'd sired Theo with.

"I will, damn you, you haunted and manipulative yet inexplicably sexy man you! You playboy with a dark secret!"

And so they argued through the night, the sauna, the tanning room, the hot tub, and then the bed room. Would that the passing of the years had made all fascists so harmless and quaint. Idiots like this deserve to be a forgettable curio of a bigone era, to be punched whenever someone needs to kill a gangster without a twinge of remorse. Don't worry, there's going to be a lot more dead fascists in this version of Worm.

Our time is up, for now. I'll see you next interlude, liss ners.

999 999 999

In honor of Colossal Mistake , who wanted something to read. Someone please comment.


	29. 3.12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor beats both the Dallon sisters, mark(wiss)ing a victory for the Undersiders.

"A bit rude," Glory Girl repeated.

"Yeah."

I'd calmed down a little since the last chapter, but I still didn't feel so hot.

"We're teenagers."

"Can we not have this conversation?" I said.

"I could tell you Amy was Mark Wee's daughter?" Tattletale said.

Mark Wee? My god, he was a straight white man with a daughter who'd done nothing wrong. He was legend in Brockton Bay, but for some reason I don't think I was supposed to think about that sort of stuff until much later, so I didn't say anything or audibly gasp, I just thought all of this inside my head. My mask was the perfect poker face. Mostly because everyone said sitting across from it made them feel viscerally uncomfortable.

“We know this story already,” Glory Girl replied, her tone just a touch tasty. God I could go for some tone now.

Amy commented, “This is new to me. I’m sort of intrigued.”

"Well," Tattletale begun, and that's when Glory Girl plunged towards her.

Amy tried to tear herself from my grip, but I had very strong hands. She changed tactics, starting to roll the sleeve of my jacket up, and I dropped her immediately before she could ruin my aesthetic any further. I wasted vital seconds getting my sleeve unrolled.

Glory Girl picked up the table Tattletale was hiding underneath, and Tattletale pointed at something behind Glory Girl. That something being me. Glory Girl turned around just as I was pointing at myself and mouthing "Me?" beneath my mask.

She roared like a bull moose, dropping the table on top of Tattletale but the other way around so she was pinned underneath instead of just fitting in the bit that's got space underneath for your legs.

I raised my fist, my knife still in my other hand.

"Kiddo!" Tattletale yelled.

"What?" I said.

"She has a force field!"

"No I don't!" Victoria yelled.

"Yes she does! Her weakness is being hit twice!"

"Like if I just punch her twice?" I yelled back.

Victoria plunged at me before I could get an answer. On instinct, I held my fist at face height and my knife at boob height, like, an inch behind my fist on the great big x axis of life. Victoria hit my fist face first, and the impact threw me off balance but didn't stop my knife from poking her in the arm.

"Ow!" Victoria and I both said, she because she had been stabbed, me because I'd been flung backwards with enough force to crush one of the security guards into a fine paste.

She looked at me like I was a table.

“I’m going to pull in every favor I’m owed, and put myself in debt with the local D.A. and whoever else I have to, to get you both sent to the Birdcage,” Glory Girl promised. No, not a promise. A vow, or an oath, or a pinkie promise. “You know what that place is like?"

"A prison without wardens with no communication with the outside world and no escapes yet, which is pretty amazing considering it houses all of the worst and most powerful villains?" I said.

"Yeah that!" Victoria said, walking over to Amy. Amy slapped her on the face and her cut was gone like that. "We don’t even know for sure if anyone’s alive inside there. It’s just a bucket where we dump scum like you, so we never have to worry about you again.”

"So you don't know if anyone's escaped?" Tattletale asked from under the table she was under.

Victoria looked like she was about to say something when a cloud of darkness appeared around her, completely muffling whatever she was about to say. I looked to the front of the bank, where what looked like a motorcyclist was sprinting towards the cloud. Panacea stepped out just in time to catch a fist to the face from Grue. Victoria stepped out, was pushed back into the cloud, and a few seconds later Grue stepped out and dusted his hands off.

"I don't know what we'd do without you Grue," I said from the other side of the room.

"What about Regent?" Regent said, flouncing his way into the room. He led a van sized creature by the leash, with that bitch passed out on top of it, and he had a finger pointing at his stupid masquerade mask's rosy cheek.

"I can't believe we beat all those Wards," I said, trying to keep a straight face.

I telekinetically flung the table off of Tattletale and onto Panacea.

Triumphantly, unlike that Triumph loser, we strode out of the bank. Kid Win made a sad little groaning noise as the camera panned out on us.


	30. Interlude 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Wards of Brockton Bay gather together to name their nemesis, and get a little sidetracked.

Diamond fade in on the building housing the local Parahuman Response Team Division. It didn't really stand out aside from all the fucking vans and the fucking Swat team division lurking outside. I mean really, you'd have to be thick not to spot it. There was a big shield outside and everything.

Those who entered the lobby of most PRT buildings would find the same strange juxtaposition of a gift shop full of kids merchandise and parading paramilitary enforcers of an unjust order. The jackbooted thugs marched every which way, carrying grenade launchers and foam throwers. More dangerous than them were the men in suits, by whose hand those soldiers' every action was excused, permitted, ignored, forgiven, compiled, filed, omitted, deleted, or given to an intern to ensure it was forgotten.

There was a cheery tour guide waiting patiently by the front desk, smiling handsomely at anybody who happened to glance his way. On schedule, he would introduce tourists and children to the PRT offices, the armory, the training area and the parking lot with the parahuman containment vans, showing them what it took to manage the local heroes. For those willing to pay for the premium tour, wait up to two hours and suffer a PRT squad escort, there would be an additional stop on the tour – a glimpse of the Wards’ Headquarters.

I left that little piece of canon there for you to read. Surprising how easy it is to get a copy of Worm over here. This one came only slightly used, with a little dent in the cover. There wasn't much more I could think of to make it seem any more nauseating than it already was. Maybe tis my bottomless misanthropy that has me feeling so repulsed by this. I've been into these lobbies before and believe me when I say a few splatters of colour really liven them up.

Triumph, Kid Win, and everyone else whose name wasn't a synonym for victory trudged into the lobby. Aegis leaked blood everywhere, scaring the pants off of some suit.

Director Emily Piggot bobbed in the lobby. Like a dancing bird gif. Just look at her go. The Wards don't look impressed though. They look petrified They know from experience that this particular display is only used to indicate extreme displeasure. Piggot finished with a move from the bat dance, her dreadful haka complete.

“Yes ma’am. We lost,” Gallant said gallantly, and then there was a brief dressing down of the assembled capes, with much blame being thrown around, though none of it seems too much fun to laugh at. Unlike that fucking tinkertech elevator. Honestly! Bunch of posh bastards with more money than sense. Gallant fits right in. I'm loving all this stuff about Aegis being mutilated though.

Anyway, the assembled heroes made their way into their debriefing room, and there they set about writing all this nonsense about Taylor being Browbeat, about Grue being lame and how we should all ignore him, about Bitch or Butch or whatever we're calling her, and this all carried on until there was an abrasive noise from the computer. Awooga, Awooga, the computers said in Dragon's distinctive accent. Everyone put on a pair of glasses and a mustache to cover up their faces. Aegis grabbed a spare from a drawer by the computers.

The entrance whirred open, and Armsmaster strode in....

Armsmaster waved at Gallant with a "Bleepity Blorp", and Gallant waved back with a "Boopity Blorp."

...followed shortly by a stampeding Miss Militia, who charged past Armsmaster, double jumped over the meeting table, and dived at Browbeat. The tragedy magnet of a Ward was knocked clean off their chair, and soon Miss Militia was kneeling atop them with the barrel of a rocket launcher pressed into their gaping "Oh" of a mouth.

Gallant smiled and welcomed her too. "Always a pleasure to see you, Miss Militia."

"I can't believe you let a stranger infiltrate the Wards!" she yelled. Her eyes were cold, a bead of sweat trickling down her dusky brow onto the red white and blue balaclava that protected her mouth and neck from the slight draft inside the PRT building.

Browbeat pleaded silently with her, but she knew no mercy, only duty, and fired the rocket point blank into the back of Browbeat's throat. The force sent her flying back through the room, but she did a backflip and landed on the meeting table. Papers swirled around behind her and got caught on Clockblocker's face and the wet bloody patches all over Aegis.

"Its a good thing I always follow Master Stranger protocols," Miss Militia belched, shaking her head solemnly. "If I hadn't followed orders like that, you'd all be dead."

"That was Browbeat," Gallant said. "They joined the Wards yesterday. I cascaded it to you in an email along with the Kid Win's weekly tinkertech update."

"I see," Miss Militia said. "So they got to you too..."

Panacea stepped through the gaping doorway, a hand held over her mouth and an ID badge dangling from her neck. She rushed to Browbeat's side, and with a bit of spit Browbeat was as good as new. Miss Militia kept her rocket launcher trained on the stranger even then, almost firing another rocket when Browbeat made that first horrified gasp of one returning from death's cold embrace. Was there a coffee shop for you too, Browbeat?

Armsmaster, meanwhile, was looking over all the Wards' notes. "Beep boop," he said, pointing at the little picture of Grue with stink lines coming off of him.

"Clockblocker drew that," Clockblocker said. Armsmaster gave him a thumbs up. "Sadly, we don't know anything about Tattletale, but I drew that picture of her eating a chicken for reference."

"She said she reads minds?" said Panacea.

"My god!" Miss Milita barked. She holstered her rocket launcher, the weight making her limp awkwardly as she paced about the room. "Everyone could be compromised..."

Armsmaster shook his head slowly. While he tried to set about calming Miss Militia down, Gallant and Panacea slunk out of the room together.

“You know how I'm rich and can sense emotions?” he asked.

"Everyone knows that," she said.

"I sensed you knew that," Gallant said, wise beyond his years. "But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to say that you seemed like you were doing shit."

"What, what does that look like?" Amy said, her breath smelling of smoke, her frail lips trembling, the deep bags under her eyes starting to fill with water.

"Sad looks like purple. You look as brown as a twig."

"I don't want powers. I don't want to be a cape," Amy whined. She blew her nose on a handkerchief.

"Have you tried asking for a refund?" Gallant said.

"What?" Amy said through her teary eyes.

"I heard if you send them back they'll give you 50% of the original price. But I also heard that if they don't like you they just get a woman to shoot you twice in the head."

“Okay,” she said, just under her breath.

"I'm sure customer service is going to be understanding. It's just like getting a new Limo when your Limo's interior colours aren't as warm and inviting as you thought they were going to be," Gallant said. I wish I was editorialising there, readers. Gallant really did say that.

Anyway, that's when they both heard another explosion from the meeting room.


	31. 4.1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is almost a scene at Taylor's school before Lisa steals Taylor to go shopping.

This chapter is 4.1. This is the chapter you are on. That is this chapter. Of my life. That you are reading. Unless I'm supposed to be telling it to you or something? My life should come on audiobook.

“You actually showed up.”

I looked up from my math textbook to see Emma looming over me. Between her expensive dress and her complex hair knot she looked like an idiot. Emma was one of those people who just seemed to ignore the social awkwardness and minor issues that plagued everyone else when they wore Star Wars cosplay to school.

"Rack off ya dag!" I said, lifting a middle finger to her.

Mr. Quinlan had ended class fifteen minutes early and instructed us to do some self study, before packing all of his desk nick nacks into a box and sprinting out of the room. The police had shown up barely a minute later, guns drawn, and had sprinted out of the classroom when they'd realised he'd left.

“People didn’t notice you were gone is because you’re a nobody," Emma sneered.

"Is because," I looked up from my work again, “Wow.”

"Tell me, what are you doing with yourself?" Emma asked. "You’re not going to school, you have no friends, I doubt you’re working. Are you really in a position to call me immature, when I’ve got all that going for me and you just… don’t?”

I laughed loud enough that heads around the classroom turned in my direction. I stood up and laughed at her face. I leaned in even closer and almost surrounded her nose with my laughing mouth.

And then I grabbed my stuff and strode across the classroom.

"Hi Taylor!" Greg said. I flipped him off as I lept backwards out of the window. As I landed on one of Lung's stray goons, I felt good. Better than I’d felt for a long, long while. Maybe it was meeting with Brian in the morning for coffee and muffins. Maybe it was just meeting with Brian. Having someone to talk to and something to look forward to before school was nice.

I decided to make my mood a little better, and unlept back up through the window, unwalked back across the classroom, and slapped Emma in a face that still hadn't recovered from me laughing at it.

"I was playing Face: The Videogame again last night," Greg said as I dolphin dived past him back onto that Lung goon.

I caught the bus to the Docks, but I let it go because I didn't have any balls on me. I made my way up the length of the Boardwalk, until the shops began thinning out and wearing more makeup. My destination was just far enough away that you’d think "Why the fuck was I even walking this far?"

Officially, it was the Lord Street Market. But if you lived in Brockton Bay, it was just ‘the that fucking market the other side of town with no roads to get to it market’.

I met up with the others at the entrance. Brian was looking soft and huggable in a dark green sweater and faded jeans. Lisa was dressed foxlike in a dusky orange dress with gray tights. Alec was wearing a long sleeved shirt and tight pants that really showed off his legs. Butch was wearing nothing today, so the others had refused to bring her out in public.

“You weren’t waiting long?” I asked.

They all glared at me, and I remembered that I'd walked the whole way here.

We ventured into the market, where the best generic market stuff Brockton Bay had to offer was on display. The worst of Brockton Bay was kept at bay by a "No Shirt No Shoes No Service" sign. Suck it Lung.

“Where do we go from here?” I asked.

“It’s just a matter of handing the cash over to the boss later tonight.” Brian picked up a pair of shutter sunglasses and tried them on.

"I meant like, after we finish buying mood rings and sunglasses."

Tattletale grinned at me, grabbing my wrist, “I’m stealing you.”

I didn't have any time to react before she ran off with me. I couldn't have followed her through the market if I tried.

“You’re a jerk, Lise,” Brian hollered after her. “Hogging the new girl to yourself.”

"The new girl's a jerk hogging you all to herself," Alec said, draping himself about Brian. "I'm getting jealous."

Oh right, Lisa had stolen me. I probably shouldn't have still been there to perceive that bit. Sometimes I just plain forgot about how powerful my powers were.


	32. 4.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lisa wants to help Taylor become very very popular. Lar.

“We’re updating your wardrobe,” Lisa decided.

“What’s wrong with my wardrobe?” I asked, a bit defensively. I mean I knew it was a little hoodie centric, and maybe I could do with more variety than sweatpants, but I just couldn't trust myself with a skirt yet and I didn't think I'd ever look good in a dress and I'd just sort of resigned myself to wait for a bit or else I'd have added something to my costume so at least I could do that stuff when I was out as a cape. Why couldn't she just leave this alone?!?

“Nothing, really. It’s just very… you.”

“You’re not making me feel better.”

"Popular. Its all about Popular. The clothes you wear, the colour of your hair."

"I don't like popular," I said.

"Well then you're wrong."

"Not the song, the look."

"Same thing. You can't just let you having been bullied by popular kids make you unable to like popular. There's a reason people like fashion and a good aesthetic can really make you feel better about yourself. So stop wearing the same three tee shirts. Stop wearing the same two trousers. Go find something that you actually want to wear and wear it."

"I don't want to wear anything," I admitted.

"Then you can stay at home with Rachel, she won't mind."

"I haven't thought about this stuff."

"I know, but you'll feel a lot better if you make a start."

"I don't want to waste money."

"Its not wasting money if it makes you feel good. Tie your t shirt into a bra like jocks do, I don't know. Something. You need to get used to showing some cleavage.”

“I’d be fine with showing some cleavage if I had anything to show,” I pointed out.

“Fine, but we’re getting you some tight jeans. You need to start getting used to showing your figure.”

“The figure of a thirteen year old boy,” I Kroused.

"Not forever," Lisa said. After a long winded bit of shopping and talking, we paid 420 dollars and 69 cents for like, one outfit and then wandered off to meet the boys for lunch.

Fugly Bobs was fast food of the second most shameless kind, sold out of a part-restaurant, part-bar, part-wolf, part-jazz-lounge, part-robot, part-shack at the edge of the Market, overlooking the beach. The most shameless kind was usually the sort of place that sold chinese, pizzas, and kebabs. This place just had a deep fat frier, a liquor license, and twenty tanned portuguese men chatting and sharing drinks while wearing straw fedoras, hawaian shirts, and khakis.

Everyone ordered sides and starters to share, and we all complained about the mozarella sticks that hadn't melted in the middle but I didn't care really cos I was saving myself for a challenger. It was the kind of burger that came with a hat if you ate it and shook the table when they put your plate down.

God yes. I'd been fucking wanting a burger for years. Coffee with a cake is nice once but after two years you just start craving salt and meat and grease. I bit into it, and burger juice and sauce spilled all over my cheeks. I felt like I could cry. It was so bad. All that french's mustard and offbrand ketchup. It was awful. The worst burger I'd ever had and I loved it. I was fucking finishing this thing, and if it all went to my hips then so be it, I'd been bitching about not having curves forever.

"So should we all tell her our tragic backstories?" Alec said, picking carefully at his fries.

"Wha he shay?" I shaid frew a moufful uff burga.


	33. 4.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alec almost gets to tell the story of his criminal origins.

"Our tragic backstories," Alec opined, his words oozing with angst and operatic drama. "For example, I come from Canada."

"Oh my god I'm sho shorry," I shaid.

"It gets worse," Brian said, a teary look in his eyes.

"Worsh?" I shaid, taking another bite of my undergrilled slab of gristle.

"Yes, worse. For you see," Alec stood, one foot on his chair, one hand gesturing, his chest poofed up. "I got my powers three months after the second worst day of my life."

"Shame," I said, trying to say same through my challenger.

"Yes, it's the same for all capes," Lisa said. "Three months after the second worst day of your life you can get your powers. Or like, that's when you're supposed to use them? Its weird. I think the Triumvirate might be making that stuff about a three month waiting period up."

"Like that stuff about capes that get their powers younger being more powerful?"

"Yep."

"What about second generation capes?"

"They just have nicer lives. Glory Girl lost a game of basketball, and now someday something slightly worse than losing a game of basketball is going to happen to her."

"So nothing is ever going to happen to me worse than losing my mom?"

"Nope!" Lisa said.

"Lisa, I'm trying to tell my sordid tale of Canadian evil," Alec said, his fingers going to his brow.

"Sorry. I just like telling people worldbuilding."

"I got locked in a locker," I said. Alec made an exasperated gasp as I continued. "The girl I used to call my best friend filled my locker full of locker juice and pushed me in."

"Was this while you were friends?" Brian asked.

"No, she'd been being mean to me before that. I woke up in the hospital two weeks later, but apparently I'd been talking about bugs in my sleep."

"Bugs?" Brian asked.

"I just kept saying "I reached out for my bugs" over and over."

"That's all very tragic," Alec said. "But I think I have you beat, you see I-"

"I couldn't save my sister this one time?" Brian asked.

"My brother tried to do a windsor knot for his tie," Lisa said, a somber look on her face. "But he didn't know how."

"My father," Alec began, with a loud and rumbling tone. "Was the master criminal Heartbreaker, who-"


	34. 4.5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we meet the evil Lord Buckethead, the Undersiders' greatest nemesis.

"And that, is how I got my powers," Alec finished. "And why I can never truly feel love again. Or hope, or joy, or sorrow."

"That's heavy," I said. I raised my torch towards the locker beside me. Nothing was still inside, not that I had expected there to be. After all, the hole torn into the locker's door had been made from the inside. I didn't blame whatever it had been in there. Having tried the locker life once, I wouldn't recommend it, but living in Brockton Bay you heard tales of people who had been conceived in lockers, raised in them.

We'd descended into a maze of storage lockers, each only about ten feet by ten feet across, but there were hundreds of them, each one joined to the one beside it, organized into disorganized rows of ten or twenty. Things scuttled and played in the gaps between them, and I worried what horrible but probably baby related monsters might be lurking about. They were a common enough sight; places like this attracted creepy children all the time. Decades ago, as unemployment rates skyrocketed, people had started using the storage lockers as a place to live. Sometimes they never stopped. Sometimes they never left. Sometimes they bore spawn. Creatures that knew no language and fed off of mildew and rat blood. Anyway for some reason some real estate agents caught on and started selling houses made out of lockers, or shipping containers for the wealthy and discerning homeless.

It had been years since then. The locker housing market had crashed after sub sub prime lending. Factories and warehouses had been abandoned. Gangs of ethnically and sexually diverse teenagers had moved into the factories, leaving the warehouses for what few locker born creatures could still pass for human. Still this labyrinth endured, just like the dead boats, just like the dead ferry. Row upon row of identical sheds with faded or illegible numbers painted on the doors. A place where you were one puddle away from turning into a mermaid.

“We’re looking for thirteen-oh-six,” Grue spoke, breaking the silence that had hung over us for the duration of my internal monologue. There was no rhyme nor reason to the numbers. They seemed to shift each night, some had been scratched off by tiny bloodied hands. The vastness of the space, the emptiness, the general sense of foreboding. These had been the reasons we had decided to bury our treasure here, and if we were not careful we would be buried here too.

We found it after another minute's searching, beside the half mauled body of a pig with the number 3 on it. The lock was intact, and we joined together in a sigh of relief. Brian searched his pockets for the key, only for Alec to pluck it from his jacket. The door was flung open, and I held my breath for a moment. I had thought that I could bare the sight of the insides of a locker again, but I had been wrong.

The locker housed only a broad smudge in the thick layer of dust on the floor, a single lightbulb dangling from a power cord, and a dark stain in the corner. No gold. No locker juice. It was just a locker, but the sight of those smooth metal walls unsettled me. Where were the rusty and tetanus inducing nails? Where was the cruel laughter of mocking predators?

"I don't understand," said Brian. "Who would have the audacity to steal our loot?"

"A villain," Tattletale said.

“A villain?” I asked, glad for the distraction from my deep and abiding trauma.

“A villain,” Tattletale echoed me.

A soft clapping answered her. It was slow, unenthusiastic to the point of being sarcastic.

“Brilliantly deduced,” the same person that had been clapping spoke, his voice British yet slightly muffled.

I span about, my torch's flame tracing an arc of fire about the darkness. There stood a man with a bucket on his head. His pea coat was blue, his opera cape grey. White gloves tightly clutched at a walking stick.

"Of course, Lord Buckethead," Lisa said, her voice filled with horror. Alec cowered behind Brian, who did his best to protect Alec by holding an arm in front of him.

"But of course, Undersiders. Did you really think yourselves rid of me?"

He made a subdued flourish, utterly unlike Alec's flourishes, and behind him the door to a storage locker opened. Three men in brown coats and tattered hats shambled out, each holding an improvised weapon in their too long hands. A sickle, a pitchfork, a flaming axe.

Then other doors opened, all down the corridor of storage lockers. Thirty or forty doors, each with at least one person behind them. Some bearing their own torches. A veritable angry mob of these twisted, wretched forms, and all of them were armed.

“You do remember my Gremloids, Undersiders?” Lord Buckethead stated the utterly unobvious for us. “It’s fitting that I commemorate my return by dealing with the people that banished me, don’t you agree?”

He didn’t expect an answer.

"No?" I ventured.

If buckets could make angry eyebrows, his bucket would have. He raised his walking stick at us and whispered, “Get them!”


	35. 4.6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Taylor and company must fight to escape Lord Buckethead's gremloids.

Brian raised his hands in surrender, and then blanketed the entire area in darkness. I grabbed Brian and Lisa by their hands and hoped that Alec was tightly flounced against someone. I wasn't sure if I could even do this, seeing as I hadn't lept off a locker recently. I unlept off of the roof of the nearest locker, dragging the Undersiders with me as I fell. Which is to say, me and the other Undersiders flew up the side of the nearest locker, looked like we were going to jump for a moment, and then stepped backwards away from the edge.

"Warn me before you do that next time," Alec said, "I'm unafraid of unheights."

“What the fuck?" I said. "Who the fuck was that?”

"Lord Buckethead," Lisa wheezed. "He has a bucket on his head and he runs for mayor of Brockton Bay whenever he gets the chance."

"What's his platform?" I asked.

"He has a bucket on his head. That's his platform. We thought we killed him..." she trailed off, and started to think real hard. "This is a different Buckethead. Someone else is using the identity."

Brian shook his head. “Whoever he is, he shouldn't have that many Gremloids. There aren't that many people in Brockton sufficiently disillusioned with our political system to vote for a frivolous mayoral candidate.”

“There are now,” Lisa glanced over her shoulder. "Trap, get down!"

I was about to say something, but she tackled me to the ground. Even then the force of the explosion hit me hard enough I could feel it in my bones. It lifted me clear off the ground . For a moment, it felt like I was adrift again, but then I hit the ground face first. My face thrummed with agony at the impact.

“Everyone okay?” Brian asked, as he struggled to stagger to his feet with Alec still wrapped around him.

“We have to move,” Brian grunted, “This gets ten times harder if he finds us. Lisa, watch out for Lord Buckethead. For Lord Buckethead. For-”

“I already found you,” Buckethead called out in what could have been an upper class accent, if his mask didn’t filter it down to a mumbled mess. He emerged from the smoke that billowed from the explosion site, and the black of the hole in his bucket was almost the exact same color as the sky above.

"And now you shall pay for-" he began, but Brian blasted him with darkness. I caught sight of his hand moving in and out of the darkness as he carried on gesturing through his monologue. With any luck, maybe he wouldn't be able to tell the difference between being blinded by a spell of darkness and having a bucket on his head.

We started to tip toe down the alley, but all at once it was like we were a mime struggling with the wind.

"My god, he sucks!" Alec said, but the force of the sucking was enough to pull the speech bubble off of Alec and send it spiralling off into Brian's cloud of darkness just in time for the cloud of darkness to be sucked away into one of the gold buttons on Lord Buckethead's coat.

All at once, the sucking stopped. My body collapsed to the ground because I'd been leaning too far forward. My face thrummed with agony at the impact. All up and down the street, massive puddles of locker juice trickled their way towards the point where Lord Buckethead stood. The stuff that had been set on fire was still on fire, and their light was all we had to see that man with a bucket on his head with.

We started running again before he could gloat, and made sure to round a corner before he could unleash another tide of suck, or worse yet, blow. Around the corner we found ourselves staring down at a half dozen half human shambling monsters. Their aged clothes hid broken bodies, and what glimpses I could see were stretched. A half formed baby drenched in locker juice rode the shoulder of one of them and raised its hand towards us, opening its mouth as if to speak. Brian thankfully threw a cloud of darkness at them before it could say anything, once again proving his usefulness.

We turned around to the other exit of this T junction in the locker maze, and we were greeted by the sound of The Winner Takes It All. My ears thrummed with agony at the impact. There were exactly eleven or so stray Lung goons give or take that had various guns of various sorts trained on us in various ways. There was a businessman and a woman that could have been his wife, a girl wearing the Immaculata School For White Anglo Saxon Protestants Only Heathens Be Damned uniform, from the Christian private school in the south end of the north end of the west side of the other neck of town, about half a block from four miles southeast of my house. Or was that southwest? There were two older men without graying hair, three women with graying hair and only one eye and one tooth and one leg and one arm and one ear and one nose between them, and a pair of guys and/or girls that might have been University students but were definitely the most androgynous looking goths I'd ever seen. Just everyday people, all singing along to a 70s Swedish pop group. Brian thankfully threw a cloud of darkness at them before we had to listen to too much more of it, once again proving his usefulness.

We backed up, trying to take the direction we'd come from, but turned when we heard the sound of a sarcastically clapping man in boots wearing a bucket on his head limping towards us at night across a shallow puddle of locker juice. Brian did not throw a cloud of darkness at him.

"Scrabble." Lord Buckethead said.


	36. 4.7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor's been captured by Lord Buckethead and is being lectured on frivolous politics!

I came to the gradual realisation we were probably going to get out of this somewhere between the third and the fourth glove slap from Lord Buckethead. Nonetheless, my face had been left red by his pathetic assault. He'd had his Gremloids drag us into the clean locker from earlier and then he'd just told them to stand outside and not do anything, ostensibly to spare them the sight of the supposed raw and unfiltered violence he'd intended to visit on us, right before he'd started rambling at us.

"If you had any sense, you would have endorsed me. But no, you chose to strike me down," a voice mumbled through a bucket. A hard tapping was delivered to the back of my head by Buckethead's cane.

"Why rebuild boats when we could buy spaceships? Why continue the shipping industry when we could hold referendums every day?"

Brian said something a way away. I didn't hear it. I wanted to hear it. I wanted to hear Brian. Pay attention to him. Blegh. My head was spinning.

"No, your idea of a fiscal plan is the real joke, Undersider!" Buckethead said. "A world of superheroes capes and you cling to the pathetic notions of realistic policy. My policies are as ridiculous as they are deliverable!"

I spat at the hole in Buckethead's bucket the way Emma spat in my face that week the Heathers convinced her to wear llama fur.

"I am Lord Buckethead, not Lady Spittoon!" Buckethead boomed. He punched me in the gut, once, twice, and I spat locker juice all over his pristine white gloves.

"Let her go!" Brian yelled.

"I'll get to you later!" Buckethead bucketsaid. "Wait your turn. Private beatings for all under 18 villains in gangs whose names start with a vowel is an important part of my platform and I can't be seen to not be delivering!"

"Your policies are a joke!" Alec yelled. "Every gang in Brockton Bay starts with a vowel!"

"Of course my policies are a joke. What do you expect from a man with a bucket on his head?"

"Yeah, well receptacles aren't allowed to run for civil positions!" Lisa yipped vulpinely.

"I think you'll find they can," Buckethead mumbled. "Under city ordinance four thirteen stroke sixty nine dash four twenty, any receptacle of sufficient import may-"

I slipped my hands out of the rope. Lord Buckethead may have been funny, but he wasn't good at tying knots. And for now, all his attention was on Lisa.

Brian mumbled something, and Buckethead's rambling came to a stop.

"What was that?"

"I said," Brian said, "That frivolous candidates only benefit the status quo by splitting the votes of those who would oppose it."

Buckethead stepped away from me, and towards Brian.

"You know nothing!"

I slipped my feet out of the rope. Lord Buckethead may have been mildly amusing, but he wasn't good at tying knots. And for now, all his attention was on Brian.

"You'll see! You'll all see! There will be a laser in every house. Guns will be made illegal! Unicycling to work instead of driving will reduce our carbon emissions!"

I reached into my pockets for my switchblade. The noise on this thing would be too noticeable for a normal man, but for a man with a bucket on his head? I tiptoed up behind him. Then I got down on the floor. Then I crawled up next to his boots. All the while, he was continuing to debate his relevancy with Brian.

"Don't you see? Voting for me is the only real freedom from the system you have!"

*click*

*stab*

Buckethead stood still, tense, and I stepped back a little. My favourite knife was firmly lodged in his shoe.

"I'll have you know this changes none of my plans for using lasers to fix our city's floundering small businesses," he proclaimed, yet to face me. He dramatically flapped his cape and limped off.

"Why didn't you just stab him somewhere lethal?" Alec asked.

"The same reason I'm going to have to do this," I said, before fainting. I let myself fall onto my front, face toward the ground, so I wouldn’t choke. My face thrummed with agony at the impact.


	37. 4.8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor gets a bagel.

“Hey Taylor, wake up.” A girl’s voice.

“Taylor?” A deeper, more adult voice, “Come on, kiddo.”

I felt warm, fuzzy. Like waking up in a warm bed on a cold day, all the covers in the right place, feeling totally rested, knowing you don’t have to get up right away. Except for some fucking reason people were trying to wake me up.

"WAKE UP TAYLOR!" the girl's voice yelled, and I punched the voice. Then I punched being asleep. Then I punched you for good measure. I can't do that so you're going to have to do that for me. I'll know if you don't, coward.

“I think she’s gradually coming to. Give her a moment,” said Someone Older.

I opened my eyes and sprang from the bed to my feet.

"Or not."

"Its a good thing Lord Buckethead let us all go," I declared, just in case.

"Yes... It is..." Lisa said, sounding worried. She rubbed at the spot where I'd punched her. "Are you okay?"

"Never better. Thank you for your help Someone Older."

"Thanks," Someone Older said.

I started to waltz out the backalley doctor's backalley room, and Brian and Lisa tangoed after me, presumably because they didn't know the waltz.

"You were talking about bugs in your sleep again Taylor," Lisa said, spinning wildly about Brian's hips.

"Can't stand em," I said.

"The thing is, the Doctor said you've been on enough painkillers to start a hearse," Brian said, plucking the rose from his teeth for a moment.

"Not enough!" I barked, twirling out into the night air. "Why was I even on them?"

"You were vomiting blood? You fainted?"

"Stations of Canon," I said, brushing them off. "I'm fine."

"We're worried Taylor," Brian said, with a breath defyingly agile double spin kick and pump.

"I can tell. But rest assured, my power is too powerful for such trivial nonsense."

And then we were all at my house. I knew my neighbourhood was run down, but criminal doctors being just around the corner was pretty wild. I idly wondered what other surgeries he did.

"Hi dad," I said, waltzing in the front door. He waved at me and went back to watching the Exposition Serious News Network. I made myself a cuppa tea in my favourite mug, a cup of coffee for Brian in my second favourite mug, and a cup of water in my least favourite mug for Lisa.

"What'd I miss?"

"Well you know how we were fighting Lord Buckethead all last night?" Brian said, finishing with a triumphant flair.

"Yeah?"

"While that was happening, the Chamberlain took a dive in his trial by stone with Lung. Then they both used their ceremonial swords to fight their way out of the Halls of Judgement, and now Lung is free again."

"Oh no," I said sarcastically. Not that loser again.

"And then stuff started blowing up and its all your fault Taylor. If you hadn't beaten up Lung none of this would have happened," said Brian.

"I thought you were going to beat up Lung anyway?"

"Oh," Brian said. "I guess when you put it like that it isn't really your fault at all."

"The city is a warzone though," Lisa said. "More people are listening to ABBA than ever. Lord Buckethead and his army of Gremloids are still drumming up support for a mayoral bid. Things are exploding. Tables are really running scared Taylor."

"Yeah, but we're the bad guys. We don't have to do anything about it, right?"

"Well, you're going to have to take a week off school while you recover," Lisa said.

"Didn't wanna go anyway."

"Then why did you go back?" Lisa ventured. "You hate it there."

"I'm fine. My power lets turn all pain and emotional drama into strength. Lets all ignore this and eat bagels."

"That's good because I made you all bagels," my dad said.

And then we ignored all that and ate bagels.

OR DID WE?

We did. I relaxed. I had fun. And nothing bad was going to be happening any time soon.


	38. Interlude 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felix Crawler's Day Off

"Rawr!" Crawler said, as it looked hungrily out across the bay at the lights of Little Rock Arkansas, which was on a coastline for some reason. It burst from under the waves, but also for some reason it was walking on two legs again and only had nine eyes. It still had a tail though, and at least four arms. Crawler rawred, and all the tiny people cheered because giant monsters are much cooler than giant robots.

Back in the world where people were awake, and monsters didn't burst from under the waves to widespread applause, Crawler yawned and rolled over and crushed another few trees. A growing monster needs its sleep. It had seventeen eyes and six limbs with six hands, two feet, and two tentacles. The awkward growing years were well behind it, even if Crawler was still hoping to get a bit bigger and maybe a little spikier on the shoulders. A bifurcated tail might be fun too. It had all sorts of ideas for how it could look, but it was very happy with how it did look.

Crawler yawned again, turning its body to face the rising sun. Seventeen eyes blinked open and shut again, two at a time. It scratched an itch on its tummy. It ran its tongues through its teeth, a habit it'd picked up years ago when its mouth still needed cleaning. Nowadays the acid tended to clean things out nicely, though it left behind a heavy taste like mingled lime and limescale. And a smell like margaritas made in a cement mixer.

Crawler decided it would rest peacefully for a little while longer. When you didn't work you could do things like that. It trilled a happy trill, resting both of its middle limbs cosily on its big squishy tummy as it looked up to the sky. Maybe one day it would be big enough to reach up and poke the clouds, but for now it just sort of pretended to stir one that looked briefly like a bunny before the wind moved it all around. It was on its third puberty now damn it, and at this rate it'd be in its early thirties in age and mid sixties in length before anyone would have a foot to stand on if they wanted to tell it to act like an adult. And then knowing Crawler it'd probably just lick them.

Eventually it got itself up with a spin and a shake of its legs, and then it started to tromp tromp tromp down the nearest hill, shaking the trees with its footfalls and trying not to crush too many of them. It liked walking. It could make its footsteps sound like a thundering galloping, or like that escaped jaguar that's right behind you. There was a fun novelty to moving around on six legs too. Way funner than just four had been. And two legs? Two was for boring people.

It was a shame it had to do this mission on its own. It liked the new people well enough. Crawler liked having people who talked about things other than murdering people. People to share a coffee with or talk about old science fiction stories where terrified damsels were turned into big scary monsters.

It started to pick up speed, excitement building as it got closer and closer to the road. It burst from the treeline and into the middle of an almost empty country road. Almost. The unluckiest Range Rover in the whole world honked its horn at Crawler, and Crawler made a great big bark back at it as the expensive off roader got closer. You got to know cars when you went on as many road trips as Crawler did. It moved into a scuttle, tail swaying from side to side and snapping off branches from the trees it passed. The car was reversing like mad, and Crawler could see the driver turn around in his seat. It wasn't quite fast enough, even with Crawler going nice and slow, and it flipped the car off the road with a slap of its head. Two sets of hands grabbed hold of the roof and turned the Range Rover into a convertible. The driver was able to look up and get a good view of Crawler in the moment before it licked him. And then Crawler was scuttling off again, the man oozing into the melting leather of his car's seat.

Crawler didn't stop scuttling for a long while, not until it crested a hill close enough to get a good view of its destination. Stamford Gloucestershire. Home to up to three capes, sometimes two when one of them was on holiday. It was a small enough town, dmall enough that it could have been on the list of next places for Crawler and its friends to visit even without a resident cape population. Lots of old wood houses, lots of trees, and a very big hospital looming off to one side for some reason.

A few of its eyes were squeezed by the muscles around them, changing the lenses' shapes to dramatically change their focus. Not quite telescopic vision, not yet, just very good at getting details in the distance. It scanned the streets for a glimmer of a cape's bright and noticeable colours, or a PRT logo. There! No PRT, but the gaudy purple and green Protectorate flag was flying right beside the star spangled banner over what looked to be a post office. And best of all, it had a whole town to cross to get there. A small town, but Crawler fancied itself the world's smallest kaiju. Crawler licked its lips with one of its tongues in anticipation, and then it was off, with the fast and manic scuttle of an excitable lizard on a hot day.

It overtook the few cars it didn't knock off the road on principle. It climbed atop buildings to check that it was still headed in the direction, leaving deep claw gashes in everything it climbed over. It lept between houses for one row, sending shingles and chimneys flying. And just for fun, it stopped to spit on the nicest lawn it had seen. What began as a gobbet of glowing green ooze turned into a pool of citrus smelling melted mud. Anyone could spit acid. Crawler spat The Blob. Crawler waited for the house's owner to stumble out the front door, screaming in horror and wildly gesturing at the state of his lawn. Then it reached a paw down and knocked him into the mud. A few more screams, and then a lot more mud.

Crawler grinned as it slunk down off of the roof. It was close. It could see the flag, and it knew they knew it was coming, so it took a gentle wandering path through the fences of every house it could between it and the post office.

A woman in a red hoodie stepped out of the doors of the post office, a megaphone in her left hand.

"Stay!" the woman in red barked, her voice coming out all garbled.

"Hi!" Crawler roared back. It didn't need a megaphone to be heard.

The woman lifted the megaphone to her mouth, and spoke again. "I am Edict of the Stamford Protectorate. I am asking that you stand down now."

"Jack says it hurts if I don't listen to you."

"Stay!" the woman repeated, raising a hand in the stop sign gesture.

Crawler took a step forwards. It positively ached, pain shooting all the way from its left upper paw to up to its right middle shoulder. Crawler bit its lip, a blush creeping onto its face. The woman took a step backwards.

"Say something else," it purred.

"This town is under the protection of the Stamford Protectorate. Reinforcements are on their way."

"Can they hurt me?" Crawler asked. "They're running out of people that can and I really want to live my best life."

"Back!" the woman was yelling now, even into her megaphone.

Fire burned the soles of all six of its paws as it kept going. It let out a great big content noise, and Edict took a step back.

"Jack said there was a girl here I'd really like," Crawler drawlered, examining one of its paws in a way that it thought might look all clever and cunning. But quickly that turned into giddy excitement, looking over its whole forelimb. It loved the curves of its claws. It loved the little pads and all the tiny little pink and blue and white scales.

Edict turned to her right and started to run. Crawler wasn't sure why she was doing that. It wouldn't really do her any good, not when Crawler was so fast and so sneaky. Crawler went from sitting to pouncing in the blink of seventeen eyes, and it wasn't until it was at the apex of its jump that its face slammed straight into a something.

Crawler flumped down onto the road, a big something shaped dent in its face until it shook its head out. An almost transparent blue box hovered defiantly above Crawler's head. That sure looked like a something. It got itself back on five of its feet, and set about poking the floating box with a claw. The box was blue, glowing, floating without bobbing up and down, and the sides were rounded. Crawler was disappointed. Invincible things were usually good for a nice big scratch but no, this one was child proof. Its eyes each span about, looking around for Licit. Licit. This was his box and he was supposed to be blue and starry. Another box bumped it as it turned its head, and then another as it moved its head again. Far from being boxed in, Crawler squeezed up and out, balancing itself two of the two glowing boxes. It turned its head this way and that. One eye spotted blue, and the rest swivelled about in their sockets to look at the other hero. There he was! He'd dashed out from behind a house a street away.

Crawler lept carefully down off of the boxes, Edict far from its mind as it started to bound towards Stamford's other hero.

Licit, stopped and set about flicking his hands this way and that, arranging one box and then another and another before turning to run again. Crawler squeezed its squishy body in between the shapes with a cartoony speed, its body making a little rubbery squeaking noise as it slid between a six foot gap between a triangle and a trapezoid. Licit turned briefly about, making one last flick of the wrists. A pair of cuboids went up and then flickered out as Crawler tried to use them as handholds, sending Crawler's front half sprawling onto the road and leaving the back half mostly resting on one box or another.

"Hi!" Crawler said, with a big toothy grin to show off all five of its rows of jagged black and blue teeth.

It could hear his heart pounding. It could see the red of his face. The cubes holding up Crawler's back legs vanished, and the rest of its body flopped to the ground. Licit started to run again. Crawler spat. A rhombus went up behind Licit, blocking a big splatter of green as he ran up a triangular prism of a ramp and over a house's fence before dashing down the gap between a garage and a house, and out onto the next street along. A glowing triangle appeared in the road, and Licit hopped up onto it.

Crawler crawled around the rhombus, watching as one triangle after another flickered into life. A pyramidal prism with Licit in the middle.

"Edict!" Licit shouted, watching as Crawler made its way towards him. It moved one of its forelimbs up to poke at the glowing blue walls. A tiny arm, barely larger than a human one, joined to each of the forelimbs by a shoulder that protruded out the middle of the elbow, reached out to feel along the seams between the triangles.

"Edict!" Licit shouted again, as a great big beasty scrutinised him inside his cage.

"Edict's power is fun!" Crawler said, speaking as best as it could with one tongue out and sliding along one of the edges.

"Turn!" Edict's voice said, and just for comparison Crawler craned its head up and about to face Edict. Obeying orders didn't seem nearly as fun though. It'd vaguely hoped her power might have had some sort of reward for it, but no, there was none of that little tingly feeling it had gotten when it was ignoring her. It moved two of its paws in to cover up the box, just in case Licit wanted to try and escape.

"Come," Edict said, waving her free hand over towards herself. Crawler shook its head, enjoying the sensation of its neck burning.

"Stay?" Edict said. Crawler grinned. It lifted one of the claws on one of its middle arms in the gesture for someone about to take a minute, and turned back to Licit's pyramid. Licit looked away, turning to face the ground as Crawler dragged its tongues all along the sides. Big gobbets of green glowing spit dribbled down the pyramid's edges, gently fizzing where they fell onto the street.

Crawler turned its attention back to Edict. A full body tingle seized its muscles, like lightning down its back as it reversed out.

It went for a very quiet prowl towards Edict, making its footsteps so very very soft. A full body tingle seized its muscles, like lightning down its thin spines, and one of its steps was more like a stomp as it put it down a little more forcefully than it intended.

"Hello again!" Crawler said, sitting up in a similar manner to the way cats did. Its head loomed a story or two above the nearest house, giving it a nice periscope view of the people on other streets running away. Its tail snaked gently out behind it. Car alarms screamed, people screamed. Something was missing...

"I-" Edict began, and Crawler smashed a fire hydrant with a swipe of its tail. Water sprayed everywhere, that last missing sound. Another beautiful day as a big beautiful monster.

"Are the Protectorate sending backup?" Crawler asked, making a quick and hopeful glance at the surrounding skies.

"No," Edict said. Crawler leaned its head down towards her to get a better look. A blue parallelogram shimmered into being in front of Edict as it drew near. It didn't dissuade Crawler, and soon its face was pressing up against the wall, ten of its eyes watching Edict for the slightest tremble.

"No?" Crawler said.

"No backup. Just bargaining," Edict said. She was clenching one of her hands into a fist. "She's in the black shack on the edge of the east side of the town, bottom of Whiplash street," Edict said.

"Who?" Crawler asked.

"Damsel!" Edict shouted. "She's the one you're here for, isn't she?"

Crawler nodded.

"Well you'll know it when you see it."

Crawler sat still for a few seconds, watching her face.

"Please, go."

It wasn't an order. More a plead. There wasn't any stab of pain as Crawler sat there, listening to her pounding heartbeat. It was a shame, Crawler had been hoping for another order to disobey. Supposedly if you were really naughty Edict's power could stop your heart, and that had sounded kind of exciting to Crawler. It had been wondering how many hearts her power could stop. Hmm. Maybe it could find that out next time. After all, the new girl might want to come back to her home town some time. Once the snine was done making her into something scarier of course.

"Bye!" Crawler said. It gave Edict a little wave with one of its front paws, and then it was off at a gait, treading on cars and people as it raced off to find its next friend.

On the other side of Stamford, not too far from the giant and somewhat out of place hospital, there was a black house. A black house with its black curtains drawn and a number of black shingles missing from the roof and holes burned into some of the walls and then boarded up with planks of wood, and a lawn full of overgrown grass. The sound of thunder rumbled from somewhere inside. Edict was right. It was pretty hard to miss. If Crawler had come into the town from this side it could have saved itself a lot of time, but then again it wouldn't have had anywhere near as much fun this morning.

Crawler sat down on the driveway, its body stretched across two lanes of potholed road, and reached out with one of its tiny humanlike-except-for-all-the-extra-joints-and-fingers extra arms to ring the doorbell.

Toccatta and Fugue In D Doorbell rang out. It decided that it liked this girl already. Crawler waited for a little while and then gleefully rang the doorbell again, getting the same silly organ music. Crawler chuckled, and the sound of its laughter blended in with a rumble of thunder and loud banging footsteps down a creaky wooden flight of stairs.

The door was kicked savagely open, and a brown haired girl in a pink tutu furiously shook her fist at some imagined interloper at head height with her.

"Who dares disturb the diabolical Damsel of Distress!" she bellowed, and a little black raincloud above her head rumbled.

"Hi!" Crawler said.

Her eyes went first to the clawed hand near her doorbell, and followed the arm it was attached to up to a shoulder that grew from the elbow of a much bigger arm, then up that arm to that arm's shoulder, and then she stared wide eyed at a great big happy grin of a face, vulpine by way of Cheshire cat, lizard, shark, bat, alligator, and then the Cheshire cat again.

"I'm Crawler!"


	39. 5.1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor goes to a bar and brags about how cool she is in front of Nazis.

5.1

The place was nondescript. As we stepped inside, it became clear that it was nondescript. There were three people inside it when we arrived, all of whom were nondescript.

"Rum!" I shouted to the nearest of them, a nondescript woman whose name tag said "Hello, my name is Rina."

“No, Skitter,” Tattletale nudged me, “She’s deaf."

"Rum," I signed at Rina the deaf, before adopting a Captain Morgan pose.

"If you want something, write it on the pad," Tattletale nudged me again. To demonstrate, she reached across the table, took the pad and wrote ‘tea, earl grey, hot’. I followed her lead and wrote RUM in bold block capitals, italics, and underlined.

Grue took the pad next and wrote "she'll have a coke, and another one for me." Then Regent took the pad and wrote "Sex on the beach."

The woman rolled her eyes, ensuring that she wouldn't be getting a tip from me.

It had been a week since Lord Buckethead's return. Brian had visited me several times, only once with Alec so he'd stop being jealous. He'd brought me coffee, and I'd shown him what few films I owned. One time we'd just laughed and talked over a Power Rangers marathon. It was nice.

What wasn't nice was that apparently the heroes had decided to call me Ugly, for reasons completely alien to me. I'd have preferred Kiddo, but according to Butch people could just call you whatever they liked. That was how Alec had gotten stuck with Regent instead of George the 3rd Base. Lung had heard about it and told all his friends that that ugly cape didn't like ABBA. And I didn't. I was more of a My Chemical Romance kind of girl.

It seemed that we had arrived a few minutes early, because the rest of the guests immediately showed up.

First was Kaiser. He wore a suit of armour supposedly made from the knives that killed his father, and all we could see of his skin was his manly, chiselled jaw. He was flanked by identical half naked Valkyrie babes with like, Thule Medallion bikinis and sig runes on their chins or something, I don't know my appropriated Norse iconography.

Purity entered behind Kaiser, whiter than Mayonaise. She could have been naked for all I knew, I wasn't going to look directly at her. It was like floodlights were being shined in your eyes. She was followed by more nazis. Just all the Nazis. A swastika titted wrestler was there, someone in an SS uniform, a spooky ghost with a stahlhelm, a woman with a buzzcut, a tiger wearing an armband. They just kept coming and coming and coming. There was even an albino guy in a Jesus hates Pronouns shirt bringing up the rear. Once they were all inside, the nazis all formed a human pyramid, and Kaiser sat down on top of it.

Coil entered after Empire 88, took one look at the nazis, shook his head, and sat down at the table. He was tall, thin, and wore a skintight costume with a picture of a snake on it underneath a set of basketball shorts.

"Who's this dickhead?" I said to Tattletale.

"Someone we obviously don't work for," she said.

"Damn straight," Coil said.

Next in was Faultline. She wore a pink and green tutu and had glowing neon eyes. Supposedly, she beat up superheroes with her power to destroy clothes for her college years, then became the leader of a small team of assembled misfits what did her bidding like. She was followed by an orange lizard and a see through snail both with matching gang tattoos in the shape of a toilet seat.

She and Tattletale said "Hold me back" in unison, seeing their respective teams rush to hold them. Apparently the two hated each other for being black costumed clever people who recruited people with powers that sounded weak unless you properly took the time to explain them to people. Brian had explained as much one morning when I'd asked where he'd gotten a bruise from. Holding back Tattletale when she'd seen Faultline in her civilian clothes apparently.

"Your magic contact lenses shit!" Tattletale yelled, struggling against Alec's very possessive looking efforts toward restraining her.

"Your powers are shit!" Faultline replied.

"You're trash mate! Everyone hates you!"

Finally, in came the Merchants. Two guys and a girl. They were dressed in business suits rendered tacky by the addition of gold chains and massive codpieces. Even on the girl, which was a look I could respect. They were acting so uppity just because they sold cocaine to bankers instead of stealing gold from banks or mercenary work or killing minorities. Worse than that? They actually seemed to care about the city's homeless population. Granted, it was so they could sell them drugs.

Kaiser flicked his hand, sending spikes protruding out of the seat Skidmark was about to take. “You can sit in a booth. You and your team are pathetic, deranged losers that aren’t worth talking to. The people at this table? I don’t like them, but I’ll listen to them. That isn’t the case with you.”

Skidmark smiled back at Kaiser with a mouthful of gold teeth that had replaced all his ugly drug user teeth, and got himself another chair. Kaiser made it spiky again. Skidmark got another chair, Kaiser made it spiky. Finally, Mush reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic folding chair, span it around so it was facing backwards, and Skidmark sat down backwards on the backwards chair. Kaiser waggled his hand at the plastic chair, but it was hopeless.

"Is there anyone else?" I asked the room.

“I’ll be taking a chair, I think,” someone spoke from the door. I didn't even bother to look at these ones. I was already tired of new capes showing up and getting described.

“The Travelers, yes?” Coil spoke, his voice smooth, “You’re not employed by me."

"We aren't," the voice said. The Travelers took a seat too.

"So we gon fuck up Lung some more then?" I asked.

"Who the fuck's she?" Skidmark asked.

"I the fuck am ugly," I said.

"And I'm butch," Bitch said, standing up and putting a hand on my shoulder.

"Hey!" the wrestler with the swastika tit tattoos said from his place in the human pyramid that was E88. "My henchmen said a butch girl was stealing my van sized creatures!"

"She does that," Grue said.

"Well don't do that!" the wrestler said.

"Who the fuck're they?" I said, jabbing a thumb at the wrestler.

"Hookwolf," Tattletale said. "They turn into an edgy wolf."

"Nazifurs can fuck off!" Bitch growled.

"What she said!" I said I did, one hand on butch's shoulder, the other pointing at this Hookwolf twat.

"Hey," Skidmark said.

"Ye?" I said, sneering.

"You're the girl that beat up Lung, aren't you?" Skidmark asked.

"Ye."

"Noice."

I nodded, not too hard. Humble nod, but cool. I was getting the hang of this villain life thing.

“Three hundred and five individuals confirmed dead and over a hundred and eighteen hospitalized in this past week. Armed presence on the streets. Ongoing exchanges of gunfire between ABB members and the combined forces of the police and military, to the point where I had to walk awkwardly around at least five firefights and listen to half of the soundtrack of Mamma Mia! just to get here. They have raided our favourite coffee shops and bombed places where they think we might order takeaway. They have seizled our territoraisles, and there’s no indication that they intend to stop anytime soon,” Coil said, trying to get us all back on track.

“Not feeling safe to walk the streets at night is a tragedy,” Kaiser spoke.

"It's just not safe for people anymore," Purity said, backing him up.

Everyone other than Faultline's Newt and Snail glared at Purity. I was glad I still had the angry eyebrows cut into my costume, even if it was only because I'd been too lazy to repair my mask yet.

"Well what if we take out the Chamberlain?" Grue said, trying to defuse the tension slightly.

"Well what if I beat up Lung again?" I suggested.

"That's a great idea," Kaiser said. "Killing Lung should make the entire Quo go Status again. We'll split up into teams and escort this..."

"Taylor," I said.

"We'll escort this Tailor to go beat up Lung again while Grue goes and bullies an angry humming bird. Then everything will go back to normal, and things will be safe for everyone."

Once again, the room glared at Kaiser.

"Here here," Purity said, giving Kaiser a few claps. The non neo nazi portion of the room collectively shook their heads or cursed under their breath or dug their nails into the table. Except for Tattletale. Tattletale kicked me under the table.

"You didn't actually beat up Lung!" she hissed.

"Silly Lisa," I said, grinning vulpinely. "Taylor always beats up Lung,"


	40. 5.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor is accosted by Shadow Stalker in the middle of a mall just cos she beat the snot out of that loser Emma Barnes.

There was a long squeal of feedback, followed by the sound of a mid twenties man desperate for another job, no matter how dead end, clearing his throat.

“Attention shoppers. Please be informed that stores will be closing at five-thirty today, as part of the city-wide curfew. Make sure to cooperate with the rozzers at the entrances and exits of the Weynmouth shopping centre, and return to your homes by six. Thank you.”

"Okay," I said.

"Thanks," the man on the intercom said back.

"Your welcome," I said.

"Alright, let's make like a banana and GTFO," I said, grabbing my useless lump of a dad and carrying him off with me.

"Sure thing big ostritch," my dad said, struggling under the weight of all the liquor and liqueurs he had bought for himself.

I was apparently due back at school tomorrow, according to my power. My dad had picked up how stressed I was using his dadly powers, and offered to take me shopping. It felt redundant after having been out with Lisa and the guys a week ago, so I skipped over describing any of that stuff for you.

Both inside and outside the glass doors of the mall’s entrance, there were soldiers. Not your PRT soldiers with nonlethal weapons, the kind that had gotten all antsy now that they couldn't invade middle eastern nations without having all their glass explode in their face. If we tried to take Panama today we'd be fucked. So the military just sorta showed up whenever the government wanted to wage war on drugs or break up a protest. In the midst of the soldiers were two capes; Battery and Shadow Stalker. A vast and terrible force told me that I should either hate or adore Shadow Stalker, which was odd because I thought that was Glory Girl's power but what the hey.

Capes always seemed so much bigger and impressive on the news. Once you looked past the fishnets, the heavy crossbow, the metal mask, the cold-iron look of her mask, and the dreadlocks, Shadow Stalker was still just an teenage girl.

“Alan,” my dad spoke, “It’s been a long time.”

I turned to look. I realised who we’d run into, and made a noise like a deflated baloon.

“It’s good to see you, Danny. I’ve been meaning to get in touch.”

“Not a problem, not a problem,” my dad laughed. He shook the hand of the ginger man. Alan Barnes. “These days, we can count it as a good thing if we’re busy. Is your daughter here?”

Alan looked around, “She was thirsty, so I’m holding our place in line while she… ah, here she is.”

Emma joined us, a diet sprite in one hand. She looked momentarily surprised as she saw me. Then she smiled, “Hi Taylor.”

"Rack off ye dag," I said, before spitting on her shoes like a llama.

"Is that any way to greet your best friend Taylor?" my dad cried out, aghast.

Emma smiled. I pounced atop her, sending her sprawling to the floor. I set about beating her, one punch at a time.

“That's much better!” my dad said.

"Emma!" Alan said, mortified.

A clawed hand grabbed my fist before I could lay another blow. I turned around. Shadow Stalker growled at me and I growled back, a noise that a van sized creature could have made. Shadow Stalker let go, stood back. She dropped into a wrestler's stance, a challenge issued. I abandoned Emma and stood up, mimicking her pose.

"Go get her Taylor!" my dad cried.

"Turn around, turn around," Shadow Stalker said. I shook my head.

She pointed at something behind me and I turned to look. Click. When I turned back my hands were in handcuffs.

"You could have hurt her more than my parenting!" Alan Barnes said, mortified.

"She'll live," I said, with a mighty flex of my muscles that snapped the handcuffs in two.

"I thought you raised your daughter better than to smile at people," Danny said, shaking his head at Alan. "We're going home Taylor."

Shadow Stalker growled at me. I raised a middle finger at her as me and my dad cartwheeled out of the mall and into our illegally parked car.


	41. 5.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor's dad goes to the principle's office

A huge pet peeve of mine: cliffhangers that lead into an unspecified change of scenery and action. Somehow I didn't think I was going to see any less of them anytime soon.

My dad and I had been made to wait for thirty minutes. There were only so many times you could sing Bohemian Rhapsody while waiting for a school to see you about charges of bullying. In our case, 5.

"What if we sung Under Pressure instead?" my dad asked.

"Don't!" Sophia's mother said.

Sophia's blond and blue eyed mom. With a short haircut. You know, I was starting to think that wasn't Sophia's mom. It looked an awful lot like a former governor of California.

Emma's dad was busy talking to whatserface's mom and dad, who'd showed up on their own. Alan Barnes the giant ginger. He was big. Emma was talking to Sophia, who looked sullen, angry, and butch.

The secretary came to get us from the office, and we were directed down the hall to an egg shaped room with an egg shaped conference table and egg shaped chairs. My dad and I sat on one side of the table, and everyone else sat on the other side. BAM. Symbolism right there.

"Sup," Principle G said. I really had missed a lot of school. "We're here to discuss us some incy dizzles where one of our "students"" he said, adding asshole quotes to the word students. "Has been victimizzled."

He looked down at a spot on the table to the right of where his folder was, and picked up the folder without quite touching it. It floated off away from his hand when he was gesturing at me.

"By these popular girls."

Emma waved at him. Sophia snarled, baring her mandibles until her so called mother nudged her. There was an empty chair between Madison's mother and father.

"So lets start by asking why you punched Emma outside of school," Mr G said, looking at my dad.

"I didn't," my dad said.

Mr G turned slightly to look at me. His folder clipped into his face.

"Because I hate her," I said.

"I thought this best to bring to the official channels," Alan said.

"Piss off Alan," my dad said.

"Why do you hate her?" Mr G asked.

"Because she bullies me."

"When you don't ignore me..." Emma said under her breath.

"What you say?" my dad said calmly. Emma jumped a little, moving to cling to her father.

"Nothing!" she said.

"That don't sound like nuffink!"

"Are you calling my daughter a lyre?" Alan said.

"No, I'm calling her a liar!"

"Listen, your daughter assaulted mine outside of school hours. Just because you push someone into a locker doesn't mean you can't be friends with them anymore. You used to push me into lockers all the time, Danny. Why can't we be friends again?"

"Piss off before I twat you Alan!" my dad roared. "Your daughter's no good she ain't!"

"I won't stand for you saying that about my daughter!" Alan said, rolling up his sleeves.

"No, stop, don't," said Mr G.

My dad and Alan started a rousing bout of fisticuffs, one that knocked Sophia's mother's chair to the floor. I calmly stepped out of the room, because my power said I probably oughtta.


	42. The Chapter That Came after 5.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where dogs drive and Taylor teams up with Nazis to defeat Lung.

Time was short, so Tattletale was in my room of the loft while I changed. She's ace though, so don't get your hopes up.

"We're doing three groups. One with you and Kaiser to go beat up Lung, one with Brian and Alec to go shoot that Oni Lee dude that I'm not sure if he came up yet or not, and one with me to go shout insults at the Chamberlain until he feels bad."

I hiked the pants portion of my armor up around my waist, then began sliding my arms through the sleeves of my jacket. The new pants I'd bought were form-fitting, and all in all, putting it on was like putting on nothing at all. It was a good thing I'd invested in those newfangled spider silk pants they were selling these days.

“I’m with the group that has that stupid bitch Faultline, that tophat wearing loser Trickster, and that shapeshifter from the Travellers. We get a few nazis with guns too, but I'm blonde so I think I should be okay for friendly fire. Trickster though...”

“The Travellers have a Shapeshifter? I wasn't paying attention by that point. You can't just introduce a hundred new capes and expect me to care about all of them.”

“Well she showed up to the pub as a gorilla with four arms."

"Lame."

"It was purple and had like, tear ducts in the shape of roses?"

"Lame!"

"Well, my power says she's not even really a shapeshifter, so I’m going to stare at her really hard until I learn all her secrets.”

“And whatcha gon do bout that Faultline?”

Lisa grinned in a fashion approximating that of a small furry creature, “I'm gonna sing Mr Brightside but deliberately mess up some of the words when we're on our way into battle.”

I shuddered.

"What's Brian up to?" I asked, trying to take my mind off of the song that had just been put in it, while putting my gloves on one at a time.

There was a knock on the door. Alec called from the other side, “Alec.”

I rolled my eyes and popped my mask on. We headed outside together, walking side by side like badasses. Between skintight latex, loose shirts, and buried underneath a hoodie we had this real dichotomy going on. I could only imagine that Butch joining in with her skirt and punk jacket would have made it look even cooler. There was a nondescript vehicle pulled over in front of the door, blocking line of sight to the rest of the street. Brian and that Rachel were already inside, waiting and patting empty seats.

"Who's driving?" I asked, before I heard a bark from the driver's seat.

"Its okay, he used to be the size of a van," Lisa reassured me.

"Its a shame he can't drive stick," Brian said, his all obscuring skull mask turning to face Rachel. She made a low growl.

"Well its a good thing the van's automatic," I said. Rachel growled lower.

"Where are the other van sized creatures?" I asked, hoping that showing an interest in her pets would defuse what little tension we had.

Rachel opened her jacket, revealing two tiny puppies in her inside pocket. I recognised one as an Oxford Comma.

It was a long trip, and the puppies made cute little sleepy noises the whole way through. Rachel would not let me pet them. :(

Half an hour in, Tattletale leaned out the open window and pointed, “See that tower, there? The one that looks like a lighthouse, but has strange and terrible notes emanating from its windows?"

"Yeah?" I said, faintly hearing a few strange and terrible notes of unholy music above the background screams and explosions of Brockton Bay. "That one?" I said, pointing at its tall and derelict shape, twisting up into the sky like that perverse Babel of long ago.

"It’s an old tourist trap that closed down a decade ago. Someone built an exact replica of Blackpool tower in Brockton Bay. It’s where the Merchants - Skidmark and his crew of dealers-"

"I know who the Merchants are fam."

Lisa looked at me like an Oxford Comma that wanted a treat. I made a gesture for her to carry on.

"Its where Skidmark and his crew of dealers used to hang out, before they made it big. Now they rent it out to some dumb German musician and a few students who like to use words like bohemian, exotic, and squamous whenever they're walking anywhere that hasn't been gentrified yet.”

The doors of the van opened up, and Brian chucked me out. I landed with an oof, and was dusting myself off when Rachel landed on top of me.

"Good luck!" Alec called, putting his hand on Brian's shoulder.

I was dusting myself off a second in time when Rachel tossed a puppy sized van sized creature at me. Luckily, my power gave me reflexes so powerful that the PRT would surely one day spot them on a camera and go "That there am power that is!"

"It needs a little time to grow," Rachel said, as to the point and slightly feral as ever. Truly her ferocity knew no bounds. Her romulan upbringing had bestowed upon her bluntness at the cost of conversation.

"Are you okay?" she asked me.

"I'm fine," I said. "My dad beat up my bully's dad. I got a call from the school to say he was in detention and they were very disappointed in him."

"What about the bullies?"

"They didn't get detention, but I got told their parents got told they were very disappointed in them."

We reached the old and haunted tower, the strange and alien music echoing down from above, and sure enough there was a group of villains waiting for us.

Kaiser was first and foremost among them. Ornate and shiny armour, totally different while still being pretty much the fucking same really to the way it was two days ago. Fenja and Menja stood either side of him, wearing their finest "Girl in a fantasy story written by men" armour, with a red armband with like, a nordic rune in the middle or something, but they were both wearing them on opposite arms so they could go and do this whole twins thing. It was kinda lame.

"Who's that, Bitch?" I said, pointing at a girl with a sun design on her costume.

"I'm not a bitch!" the girl said, taking umbrage at my question.

"Apologies, I was simply asking my comrade, whose chosen cape name is Bitch. Isn't that right, bitch?"

"She's Sunspot," Bitch said, sounding a little annoyed. "With the Travellers?"

"Gotcha," I said.

Just behind Sunspot was two members of Faultline’s motley crew. A half man, half amphibian freak of nature was hanging off the wall by his fingertips and toes, and a woman whose costume was covered in what looked like mazes was leaning against the same wall. Probably Labyrinth. She looked like she'd be named Labyrinth with hair looking that Bowie. Newter, the horrifying abomination with the faded orange skin, was wearing tattered jeans and had dyed his hair a jeans blue. Wait, no, he was just wearing a pair of denim booty shorts on his head.

"Glad you could join us Kiddo," Kaiser said. "Ready to beat up Lung for us?"

"Yeh fam."


	43. I looked at the others, and they were all moving into cover.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor and the Neo Nazi supervillains sneak up on like three people.

Kaiser, Fenja and Menja had all ducked into an alleyway. Bitch and her van sized creatures (which had grown to full size in the time between last chapter and this chapter) were disappearing around the far corner of the same building.

Ahead of me, a trio of people in ABB colors crossed the street. A guy and a girl who looked like they might have been gang members before it was cool. A teen who was about my age trailed behind them, looking too scared and worn out to be anything but someone's kid who'd just been dragged along. They were all armed. They were all azian too. One had a baseball bat with nails hammered into it. I wanted a bat like that.

Just behind them was the building that had to be our target. It was a dirty gray warehouse with the letters "That Azian Gang Is Not Here" spray painted on and around the loading bay door in an elaborate style that told me some gangers had way too much time.

"Hey!" I yelled. The scared kid with the bat turned to face me at exactly the right moment for my boot to hit his face. I spinning ninja kicked the woman in her gut, and after an elaborate leg sweep that knocked him to the ground I stomped on the face of that guy who'd been an azian before it was cool.

"ATTACK!" I yelled, after the fact. I'd sort of gotten ahead of myself. Still, now I had a spiky baseball bat. I'd like to see Emma Barnes have a go at me now.

Kaiser shook his head, and issued a complex hand gesture that suggested he was either going to go aroundiijjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj the back and ATTACK! from there, but it could just as easily have meant he was going to go off into a bush with his two Valkyries and leave us undermen to go sort this shit out ourselves.

Me, Newter, Labby, and Sunspot collectively pointed at a point on the side of the building, and Rachel whistled and pointed at a spot slightly to the right of where we'd been pointing, sending her van sized creatures out to headbut it and claw it until they'd dug a hole big enough for themselves. Which was fine, even if we just wanted them to go in through the thin garage door we'd been pointing at.

We cartwheeled in through the hole Bitch had dug, into a room full of naked men and women covered in powdered sugar.

"Donuts!" I said, pointing at them.

Newter walked up to one and said hello. He greeted them faster than an enthusiastic waiter on a busy night, clearing his way through the lot of them before I could stop pointing.

The lot of them dropped to the floor faster than you could say "Aroundiijjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjabouts."


	44. Five Point Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor gets ready to HOLY SHIT ONI LEE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HERE!

I sensed a presence I'd not felt in a long time.

"Lung!" I said.

"Lung?" Sundancer asked.

"And some loser who I've never felt before..."

"Sorry," Newter said.

"No, not you. You should be busy with Oni Lee."

"Oh no!" Newter said. He put his hands up and span on the spot, waiting for Oni Lee to show up. I knew his power was a mix between Multiple Man and Nightcrawler, but his copies were so lame they just gave up and died. He'd been using his power to create infinite dust so he could corner the market on litter boxes, but then he'd found out killing people was funner. And that whole "Nobody is allowed to make money except members of the Elite" thing that Earth Bet has always had going on, don't ask, long story.

You know what, fuck it. Apparently a secret cabal of wealthy bastards funded a few concerned individuals that themselves had pushed for legislation that would limit the ability of capes to damage the existing market practices of our society. Simultaneously, an entirely unrelated secret cabal of wealthy bastards with superpowers decided to... Oh god I was right this takes forever to explain. We'll get to this later I guess.

Sure enough, Oni Lee sashayed into the room. He struck a pose, and before Newter could slap him he was turning into dust. Newter coughed, choking on bits of Oni Lee. My god, that's what those naked people had been covered in. They were cutting Cocaine with Oni Lee!

An Oni Lee had appeared in front of Bitch, and handed her a grenade. She took it, and checked to see the pin was still there. She laughed, relieved, but an Oni Lee reappeared in front of her and grabbed the pin. Bitch shook her head at him, but Oni Lee nodded his head and teleported again. Bitch covered her mouth and lobbed the grenade off out the nearest window. But where had Oni Lee gone?

I suddenly felt a stabbing pain in my back. Something had stabbed me in the back with something. It hurt moderately.

"That moderately hurt," I said. A hand grabbed me by the shoulder as the blade was plunged deeper into me, exploding into a blossoming blooming bouquet of liquid pain.

"That was for Lung's balls, kiddo," Oni Lee whispered into my ear, waiting for me to drop dead or scream from the knife he was twisting inside me.

I didn't, fyi. How could I tell you a story if I was dead? Nope, I just stood there.

"Are you.... Are you not dead?" Oni Lee said, the raspiest and edgiest voice I'd ever heard sounding verily confuzzled.

"No you," I said sagely, raising my hand to stroke the chin of my mask. Because I knew that while he knew that I knew I had a knife in my back, Oni Lee didn't know that I knew he didn't know that he presently had his back to the hole in the wall we'd come through. And thanks to Coil we, happened to have some professional friends in some pretty high places.

BANG! went the high powered silenced legendary custom military grade hunting sniper rifle, followed by a distant and whispered "Just business, kid."

I was thrown to the ground by the shear shear shear shear powerful dreadful shear power of the impact of that fateful shot, sent rolling off into the other wall. I looked up through my legs to see Oni Lee poking at the kneecap sized hole in his leg. There was a distant sound like someone chambering another shot into something that probably used bolt action for balancing purposes, and Oni Lee melted into dust.

"Is he gone?" Newter said, coughing up a dragonfull of Oni Lee dust.

"He's gone!" Sundancer said, having done nothing to help.

"You haven't seen the last of me!" Oni Lee rasped, his voice faint and distant.

"No Sundancer," I said. "I don't think we've seen the last of Oni Lee..."

"No sirree..."

"Eeee..."

" ... .... .. .. ....... ...... ..... .. . ............... ... ... ........."


	45. 5.7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As she always has done and always shall, Taylor single handedly defeats Lung.

5.7

I didn't like leaving Labyrinth behind after she did fucking nothing to try and help us with Oni Lee, but we totally left Labyrinth behind so she could tie up a few unconscious Lung Goons. I stressed the importance of not letting them run free. We didn't want them to keep turning up. Especially not naked Lung Goons. So we left easily the highest rated Shaker in Brockton Bay, Vista be damned, to carry out a menial task.

Me, Newter, Sundancer, and Bitch ventured upstairs after Bitch had finished shrinking her van sized creatures to the size of motorcycles so they could get up the stairs. Before we could reach the top, Newter was coughing his lungs up and complaining about if this counted as cannibalism.

"Of course it doesn't, you're an amphibian, not a human," I said, before realising how shitty that sounded of me. "Sorry," I added.

"Its okay," Newter wheezed.

"Stay here," I said, leaving Newter in the hands of Sundancer. I could take Lung. EDIT: She's wearing gloves at this moment in time, leaving Newter in her hands is okay.

The roof of the next room up had been torn off by two giant women, who were leaning in to poke at Lung's goons with pointed sticks. Lung was trampling this way and that, stepping around a floor covered in spikes just big enough for a giant lizardy person to have a hard time not stepping on.. He was big and looked nothing like anyone's drawings of him would be, no matter how specific I got with the description, so I'm just not gonna try. Suffice to say, Lung big, Lung strong, Lung scaly, Lung got a silly looking face.

Kaiser was in the middle of the fray, punching Lung's goons and making little noises as he did. Lung made a little step towards him, but a chunk of metal shot up towards him and Lung stepped back like a coward. It was in that moment of fright that Lung managed to spot me across the room. Sombre music swelled before dropping for one of those beats they leave for comedic effect.

"Not you again!" Lung said.

"It is I!" I said, striking a pose.

"You didn't do anything to him," Bitch said.

"No," I said. "But he got fucked up anyway. And it'll happen again!"

"Confound it Undersider!" Kaiser roared. "I thought you were going to annihilate this tall fire breathing lizard!"

Lung took a step back, standing up to his full height. I realised with horror that his monster form wasn't null. I saw terrible things in the half light of that room. Terrible, half rotten things. I never wanted to see my own again.

However many darts Armsmaster had shot him with must have done it, because Lung had been neutered. Wait. Neutered. Of course! Newter!

I grabbed Newter and yeeted him at Lung. Lung caught him, and looked at me. Lung raised an eyebrow at me. I leaned back and folded my arms. Lung looked at Newter, and scrunched up his eyes. Newter smiled at him, and Lung squeezed him tight enough to make his eyes bulge.

"How ironic," I said.

"What?" Lung said, loosening his grip on the newt man in his hands. I went to adjust my glasses, but too late did I realise that they were in fact, drawn on.

"Your name was Lung, but you were defeated by contact hallucinogens instead of inhalants."

Lung looked down at the newt in shock and dropped him, stepping carefully back.

"My sobriety," Lung said, staggering back and forth about the room. "I needed that to feel bad about myself!"

He managed a good ten more seconds of awkwardly walking before he slumped forwards and fell asleep. Without his leadership, Lung's Lung Goons scattered like the separatists before Nemesor Zahndrekh at the 5th battle of Vryndarkh or Vindork or wherever, like the geeks before Alexander the Great, like headless chickens at the sight of a headless chicken.

Kaiser clapped his hands together. "Good job! You really showed that worthless subhuman garbage what for!"

Everyone sort of looked at him. Kaiser made a little gesture using his throat that meant he either wanted us to cut Lung's head off, or he wanted takeout sauerkraut. Sure, Lung was unconscious, but he was also a forty foot long lizard man covered in shiny scales. My power was telling me we couldn't even if we tried.

"I wish I could've done something," Sundancer said.

"Nobody cares!" I said, walking carefully over to the body. I gave one of Lung's soft and vulnerable looking eyes a kick. "Cor, wouldn't it be a right larf if we just poked his eyes out with a stick and then fucked off?"


	46. 5. Wow We've Skipped Two of These

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor harasses a woman over the phone

"Hey corporate puppets!" I said down the phone.

"Yes, this is the Brockton Bay Parahuman Response Team," a tired sounding woman said. "What is the nature of your Parahuman related emergency?"

"I just poked out Lung's eyes with a stick. He's fucking wasted mate, I need an ambulance here or he's gonna lose his nards again."

"Please don't waste the PRT's time."

"Why?" I shouted, glaring daggers in the general direction of the building in the middle of the bay part of Brockton Bay that was not officially the PRT's. "Have you got lots of turning innocent children into soldiers to get back to, pig?" I dramatically hung up on Lung's phone, and I was about to lob it up into the air and melt it with my amazing and astounding powers when I remembered what Victoria had done. Hate had ruled her mind then. And I wasn't about to let hate rule mine. No. No more senseless violence. Besides, this was a pretty sick phone. Hotpink clamshell smartphone. With plenty of credit on it too. Add that to the money in his pockets and I'd just made about two hundred bucks beating up Lung a second time. Toss that on the pile of gold I had in my room back at the hideout.

"I can't believe you poked out his eyes..." Sundancer said.

"Nah, me neither," Bitch said. She offered a hand for me to high five and I high fived it hard enough to make my hand hurt. "You're off the fucking chain."

"What is wrong with this earth..." Sundancer said, shaking your head.

"This is why I spend as little time here as possible," Labyrinth said, in a moment of solidarity with another waste of space cape that didn't take out none of Lung's goons.

"Well, that went well," Kaiser began. "At last the depraved and-"

I segued me and Bitch a few streets over so we didn't have to listen to the rest of whatever he was going to say. Then I segued back and got the dogs we'd forgotten. Then I sequed nowhere for good measure.

"So what now?" I asked, sequing on the spot..

"We could go back to the hideout and watch Revenge of the Binks again?" Bitch shrugged, saying.

And so we did, and there was much lying of one's legs atop one another's on the goat slash foot rest, as per the norm whenever two gays attempt to sit straight on a couch. Oh god, we're almost out of backlog.


	47. Interlude 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A happy snail's journey towards getting to drink his drink.

I'm sure that Gregor the snail would be none too happy to know that once again, though noone would have believed it, minds immeasurably superior to his own were scrutinising him like the drop of water multiplying thing he resembled. Where once he was some statistic to mad scientists, now he is observed in the same fashion by madmen and madthems who view him as a tragedy. And slowly, surely, we are drawing our plans against him. Darn it. I've gone and got War of the Worlds stuck in my head again now.

Anyway, for now we must watch this translucent snail man go about his daily business, making the most of a life pointlessly ruined for the sake of something petty and small like trying to save the world.

His business today seemingly being getting teens to buy vodka for him. Maybe an "In Soviet Russia" joke was in order, but I find formulaic jokes to be the very bottom of the barrel when it comes to humour.

“Yo, this what you want?” the teenager with poor personal grooming habits and a hoodie to cover up his ugly mug said.

A snail man with nasty hands snatched the brown paper bag off him and clawed through packet after packet of beef jerky to find the real prize. Smirnoff. Strawberry Smirnoff. Noone could know that Gregor was drinking this revolting stuff, lest they might ask for a share. Not Newter, not Labyrinth, not even Faultline.

“Da,” the snail man said. His voice was "slightly" accented, the words and sounds that of someone for whom English was a second language the first time around, and a first language the second time around. How ironic that a snail had a slug to blame for that.

He shoved a bunch of bills into the teen's bill, and went on his merry snaily way, wrapping his shell covered hands all around the cap of the bottle and undoing it. Just a sip. Just a quick one.

By the time Gregor had returned home, he was wishing he had made the kid buy him two bottles. Passers by called him drunk if they were nice to case 53s, or monster if they weren't, or fat if they were just plain mean. I mean really, this is the modern world, not everyone has the time to get jogging in. Regular exercise is a bourgouise luxury, stolen from the poor before being comodified by gyms and sold back to the masses. It takes effort to not put on weight. It takes effort for a healthy diet. And some people, like Gregor here, just had the wrong body. Not the wrong body to begin with, he was probably fine with himself before he was abducted and drugged and mutilated. Honestly, you'd have to be a real jerk to do something like that.

From a block away, you could see the Palanquin bouncing. That's how loud the music was. Enough to make a building throb like a heart. Ugly yellow neon letters spelt out the club's name.

They were lining up around the blockton just to get in. Gregor had no need of queues, and walked up to the bouncer.

“What the hell?” one of the girls near the front of the line complained, “We’ve been waiting for forty five minutes and you let that fat fuck through like that?”

Gregor raised a middle finger at the girl, showing off his gross slimy skeleton fingers.

"Come back when you look like this!" Gregor said, giving the doorman a brief hug in a gesture of thanks.

Gregor squeezed his way through dancers, aided in his struggle towards the stairs by his natural lubrication. The upstairs balcony was filled with girls, all flouncing over one another like cats on catnip. Only three people were more or less alert as Gregor approached. Two girls and a newt.

"Gregor, my man!" Newter said, extending a hand. Gregor slapped it. Da, dat was de stuff.

"I was just about to show these ladies a good time, want one?"

The lady in question gave Gregor a slightly disgusted look.

"Don't be like that. This is Gregor. He's made entirely out of gelatin. Its like sleeping with a waterbed. Ain't that right Gregor."

Gregor nodded.

"You can see right through this bad boy," Newter said, reaching a hand around the shoulder of the other girl. She promptly flopped to the floor, unconscious.

Newter sighed, shaking his head.

"You want smelling salts? I make smelling salts?" Gregor asked, but Newter waved him off.

"I'm fine," Newter said, his face desperate. "I'm doing just fine. Hey uh, why don't you see Faultline. She wanted to speak to you."

"Really?"

"Yeah, just uh, leave Laura here with me."

"Ok," Gregor said. He turned to leave, but a hand tugged on his shoulder, setting his body wobbling.

"Hey jello boy," the girl said.

"Hmm?" Gregor said.

The girl pressed a card into his hand.

"Call me."

Gregor smiled to his snaily self as he walked off to Miss Fitts's... Miss Fitt's... to the office of one Miss Fitts. Behind him he heard the thump of a woman dropping to the floor, and a sad cry of "Not again..."

Gregor opened the door to the office that belongs to Miss Fitts. Inside, Spitfire and Labyrinth were compromised atop a stone slab in the midst of a garden of green grass and grey cloudy skies.

"Wrong door!" Spitfire yelled, magma dripping from her lips and onto her bare chest, where as I understand it it changed magically into lava in the eyes of the pedantic.

"Sorry," Gregor said. He shook his head in embarrassment as he closed the door on the behind himself and walked that little bit further, to the office that belongs to Miss Fitts.

Miss Fitts was in her professional clothes; a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the top three buttons undone, and black slacks tucked into shiny black riding boots with steel toes that made a big loud clacking noise when she walked. Her midnight black hair was tied back in a perfect ponytail. Her eyes carried a warning for those sensitive to flashing lights, alternating between red and blue with a violent and violet fashion. She had three cups and a half empty bottle of Strawberry Smirnoff on her desk in front of her.

"Watch this," she said, knocking back a shot. She took her spike covered hairpin out of her hair, letting the midnight black curls unfurl, and then she set the pin down on the table. Under one of the cups it went, and then she was spinning cups all about this way and that.

Miss Fitts lifted all three of the cups, one at a time. No hairpin. Gregor appreciated this. Gregor gave a little clap.

"How's Labby?"

"She was in her room with Spitfire."

"What is it with that girl and fucking pyromaniacs..." Miss Fitts said, taking another swig of her vodka, straight from the bottle. Gregor stared at her the whole while, envy in his beady eyestalks. "Where does she think she lives? In a club?"

Gregor made a little chuckle.

"Here, help me finish this off," she said, eyeing the half filled bottle. "Fuck! Where does it all go?"

"Maybe Cauldron stole?" Gregor said, extending a hand for the bottle.

"Of course they did!" Miss Fitts said, taking another swig. Gregor stared at the bottle of reasonable but well marketed fermented potato. "They're responsible for everything. They're the reason I was thrown out of university and everything. My thesis was too close to the real secrets!"

Gregor doubted Miss Fitts was telling truth there.

"Do you have another lead?"

"Of course I do. You remember Mayor Stanton?"

"The man that made ass of himself at Christmas party here?"

"I showed him a few photographs and asked him if he knew where a girl could get herself some superpowers."

"Really?" Gregor said. It sounded almost impossible.

"No, I zapped his clothes off and beat him up until he told me how his son got his powers."

"Won't he want revenge?"

"Yes, he will..." Miss Fitts explained as she reached into her drawers and pulled out a blonde wig. She grinned the grin of an aristocrat wearing a red coat and riding horseback who was just following tradition. "He sure will..."


	48. 6.1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I think ABBA is falling apart under a sustained onslaught

I squared off against a very thin Japanese man. He bore a katana in one hand, a knife in the other.

"PREPARE FOR MY ULTIMATE ATTACK!" he yelled, holding his knife and sword out in a T pose. He started to slowly tiptoe towards me, his face frozen in an expression of constipated rage.

But what he didn't know, was that I'd managed to wrap a wire about his foot and my shoe. All I had to do was pull a sick pose, and the wire would tug, tripping him to the floor.

"WHAT!!!" he cried, in the five minutes it took for him to finish tripping while I explained what I'd just done to him. Such a shame that his ultimate attack left his hands out to the sides, because he didn't have enough time to use them to stop his fall, and now he was about to hit his face into the pavement. And then he did!

"Now to finish you off!" I yelled, raising my foot high into the air. "MEGGGGGAAAAAA!"

"NOOOOO!" he yelled.

"STOOOOOOOOMPPPPPP!" I said, stepping on his head really really really hard.

This was our third night of beating up Lung goons since like since like since me and like that bitch like had gone up against the source. Like, each night had a harrowing and engaging fight that could have filled their own novel, but would have been fucking boring to sit through a montage of. I wasn’t sure how much of that was me getting more comfortable with my powers, and how much was the fact that the ABB was falling apart under the sustained onslaught.

“I think the ABB is falling apart under a sustained onslaught,” Grue spoke from the driver’s seat, echoing my thoughts.

"Grue spoke from the driver's seat, echoing my thoughts," Grue said.

Lisa commented, “It’s like I probably didn't get around to telling you, Taylor, someone breaks those unwritten rules, and the community protects the status quo as fiercely as Zac Effron did. Us villains are the real heroes and the heroes just put on a pretty show. Oh my god, oh my god, wait, wait."

"What?"

"Putting on a pretty show! My power just figured out Genesis' power!" Lisa said.

"Who's Genesis?" I asked.

"The shapeshifter from the Travellers."

"Are they nonbinary?" Brian asked.

"Not every shapeshifter is genderfluid, Brian," Lisa said, with a roll of her eyes and a pose of contempt so hard that it required her to roll down her window to let it go a little further.

"Can you summarise them all in one sentence each?" I asked, hoping to avoid setting up any more non entities than I had to. Rest in peace Sparky, wherever you are now.

"Genesis has the power to be fantasy monsters for a little while instead of the body that she wishes she could escape, Trickster has no real talent other than taking other people's places, Sundancer can distract people from how she moves like a newborn frog, and Ballistic is good at throwing."

"Thanks Lisa, we really needed to know that now. I'm going to call Alec and check he isn't burning the hideout down..." Brian said.

“Then I’ll call my dad,” I said. I stepped out of the moving car to make my call.

He picked up on the first ring.

“Hi dad.” I said, looking up at the night sky from the pavement.

“I am dad,” he said.

So he’d been concerned...

“I’m going to stay at Lisa’s again, tonight.”

"Okay," he said.

Damn it! Why was he being so unreasonable!


	49. 6.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor goes to see Brian at his house

There was something exhilarating about living without adult supervision. The knowledge that you could wake up half naked and stay that way until dinnertime. It wasn't that I hated my dad, but somehow being a slob and not doing anything until later in the day was only cool when I did it.

It had been like that for a while. Since the week I was supposed to spend bedridden with the concussion, but where I'd just sorta chilled out really until I could be arsed to go out and deal with the ABB some more.

"Wait," I thought.

"What if we'd just fucked up Lung for good?"

I mean, I did have very powerful powers. Ah, nevermind. Lung probably wasn't ever going to do anything important again.

Besides, my favourite song was on. I'd been curled up on the couch with a blanket around me so I could watch kid's shows and the universe had decided to smile on my pirate loving arse.

“Morning,” Lisa greeted me.

"Morning," I said.

"What are you watching?"

"A dead man singing about the joys of piracy," I said. "Just look at him go."

"When did he die?" Lisa asked.

"Seven years from now," I said, refusing to take my eyes off the screen.

"My power says her hair is a wig," Lisa said.

"Tell me something I don't know," I said.

"Due to a factory worker's mistake, you can change the channel on our TV with the volume controls."

Damn. And I'd wanted to turn this song up and all. How ironic.

Lung's cell phone buzzed on the couch cushion beside me, painfully tearing my eyes from the screen. Apparently, Brian had been texting me.

>Hey  
>Hey  
>Good afternoon.  
>I finished early today.  
>Are you doing anything.  
>Hello.  
>Are you ok?  
>I am home.  
>Alec isn't  
>Want to come over?

I sent my reply.

When will you get here?  



	50. 6.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor and Brian talk about feelings

I opened the glass doors for Brian so he could carry the bench in. The thing that had really struck me about his apartment building was just how non nondescript everything was.

The apartment was virtually two stories, a fairly open concept almost four walls.

"Why is there just a hole in the wall?"

"A Nazi laser beam destroyed it because she thought I had drugs in here," Brian said.

I didn't know what to say. Not just in terms of loss of Brian's wall, I literally had no idea what words should be coming out of my mouth, but I had a hunch that the bluuuggghhhh crawling out from between my lips probably belonged there. I'd been distracted, much by Brian's features. All I could think was "Dammit Taylor, why can't you think of something to say?!"

"You're fine Taylor."

"Bluuuggghhhh?"

"I can't think of White Elephants," Brian said. I wasn't sure what I expected to see in Brian's place, but Brian being in Brian's place still managed to surprise me.

Brian grunted as he set the bench down just next to his couch. It was a soft, gentle grunt.

“That’s one,” he smiled.

"You need more benches?"

"Yes," Brian said, looking grimly to the demolished fourth wall of his apartment. A bird made of thorns flew past, chased by a hawk sized dragon. Brian slowly turned his face away from it, a hand moving to cover his eyes.

"Brian?" I asked, concerned. I placed a hand on his leg reassuringly.

"I'm fine," he lied, shedding a single tear of emasculation.

"I'm here for you," I said, my heart threatening to send my brain a notice of its impending moving out of my chest but still not being a hundred percent convinced of the move.

"When I first moved in here, I invited the Undersiders around for a house party."

"Did something happen?" I asked.

"Yes," Brian said, shrugging off my hand. I longed for the touch that he had withdrawn from. That moment of warmth. "I won't let myself be like that again. I can't. I can't be a man if I invite my friends around and I have to ask if someone is okay sitting on a camping chair."

I stared at his immaculately exposed shoulder as I mustered the courage to say something. "People can sit on the arms of a couch Brian," I said.

He sat down, and I sat down next to him. I stared down at the ground, at the leg I was holding.

"Taylor?" Brian said. He didn't ask it, he just said it in a weird way that let me know it was about to be a question.

"Sorry," I said, letting go of his leg. “I get nervous when I’m close to people."

"You're close to me?" Brian asked, looking ask ants at me.

"Not like that!" I said, a little too quickly.

"Good." Brian said.

"Okay."

"Because that would be pandering."

"Yeah."

"We're just..."

"Yeah."

"You're holding my leg again."

"Sorry.

Bravo, Taylor. Bravo. I imagined the slowest, most sarcastic of slow claps. Even that nazi princess would have been able to call my kettle black on this one. Even talking about bad breath and B.O. would have been better than that.

My cellphone made a noise.

It was a text from Lisa.

-5rry to in7errup7 yr mee7 cu7e bu7 my power 5ay5 5hi75 going down an yr roman5e sux.

"Who was it?" Brian asked.

"Lisa," I said. "She said 5hi7 i5 going down."

"That is how she types," Brian said, nodding.

He offered me a leg to help me to my feet. Was I being observant or just painfully aware of what a barista had once told me was the least engaging romance they'd ever heard of when I noted that his leg lingered precisely 0.5 seconds longer than what was strictly necessary for helping people to their feet?

Was a part of me dreading those possibilities, hoping that it was neither hope nor accurate observation on my part? Because I couldn’t quite tell if there was, or if I just wanted to-

Oh.

Fuck.


	51. 6.4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Undersiders learn of a sisnster plot to steal their cred.

This chapter is 6.4. That's the chapter you're reading, right now. The sixty fourth chapter of the story of my life.

“Thanks to concerted efforts by members of Brocktons Bays’s Wards and Protectorates teams, the local gang, you know, the local gang, the one led by literal fire breathing lizard and anti cigarette spokesman Jake Lung, has fallen. Sales of recordings of ABBA are down by-”

Brian and I had arrived at the loft just in time to catch the bulletin the news programme was wearing. Lisa, Alec, Cashmere, and that bitch and her three pets were all sitting on a very long couch that had been moved into the spot the old couch had been in. Either that or the old couch had changed colour and grown three sizes.

“The heroes of the hour are the young members of the Wards, Clockblocker and Vista, who were able to instantaneously close the distance with Lung and apply stasis to him until Armsmaster was able to arrive on the scene with enough tranquillisers to calm even the mightiest of reptiles."

“As much as we might wish for a period of sombre reflection, other local villains have shown little interest in resuming the status quo. Less than an hour after suspected villain Lung and his alleged accomplice the Chamberlain were brought into custody, the head offices of local small business the Medhall Corporation were assaulted by armed forces with alleged ties to terrorist organisation Antifa, in an altercation that drew the attention of members of local Aryan community support group Empire Eighty-Eight. Empire Eighty-Eight were bravely able to fight back these forces with the help of local police officers. But wait, there's more! This isn't the only violent incident to have happened today-”

"Turn it up," I said.

The channel changed to a nature documentary where a lion was sitting about on a rock. Rachel growled, baring her teeth at the television.

Lisa snatched the remote from Alec's hands and lobbed it at the TV, managing to hit the AV button and switching it over to the blank screen that looked at us and shrugged as it said "No source detected."

"I'll give you the cliff notes," Lisa said, briefly glaring at the TV before turning her gaze back to me and Brian.  
"The Merchants just bought an art gallery and an airport, Coil and Empire Eighty Eight are apparently having an actual gang war on the streets instead of that weird ass everyone versus Lung thing we just finished, and The Travellers are selling people cocaine that according to my power contains human skin."

"Aw shit," I said. "Here we go again."

“It’s like everyone was poised at the starting line, ready to move the instant the gun fired,” Alec said.

“Except us,” Brian pointed out.

"I know!" Alec whined. "I feel so left out! Can we rob another bank or something?"

Lisa vulped a grinnine smile. "I asked the boss what we could do, and he's got a job so we can get in on the action. You know how you totally beat up Lung, Taylor?"

Brian folded his arms. I folded mine to follow suite.

Lisa shook her head. "Those loser rich elites are making a fundraiser so they can say they beat Lung."

"But I beat Lung!" I said, heartbroken. I even took the credit this time!

"Yeah, then you poked his eye out with a fucking stick," Rachel said, chuckling a little.

Lisa held up a finger. We all looked up at the ceiling. The ceiling lamp looked down at us, and promptly scuttled off into the corner to canoodle with the daddy long legs or something. We all turned back to look at Lisa. "The boss says, why don't you all go rough it up?"

"I'm liking the direction this is going here," I told her.

"The entire Protectorate and some of the Wards are going to be there along with the richest people in Brockton Bay, their friends and family, their friends' friends, and everyone else who asked Dean Stansfield for a ticket."

"The police chief, the Mayor, the DA...." Brian said.

"Billionaire playboy and eligible bachelor Maxwell Anders..." Alec said.

"So we're going to blow it up?" I asked.

"No! That would fuck with the status quo too much. We're going to embarass them."

"We should blow it up," I said. Cashmere bleated in agreement.

"You’re aware that if we tried that and any of us got caught, it would pretty much be a first class trip to the Birdcage?” Brian pleaded in disagreement.

"Nobody actually goes to the birdcage," Rachel growled.

"Says who?" Brian asked.

"Nazis. Furries," Rachel explained, with her typical bluntness and to the pointness. "Nazifurs."

"I say we take off and nuke the fundraiser from orbit," I said, stroking Brian's chin in thought.

"Sleeper's in space!" Lisa said.

"I say we take off and nuke the fundraiser from a very high altitude but still within Earth's atmposphere," I said, as Brian pulled my hand away from his chin. "Sorry."

I was hard at work thinking my thunking thonks. All we needed was a plane, and we'd be able to wipe out the entire upper class AND parahuman police force in Brockton Bay in one fell swoop. Why, we'd be a paradise within a day. Granted, we'd still have a festering locker shaped series of portals to hell by the docks, and granted zombie boats still roamed the harbour.

"My power says we don't have a nuke," Lisa suggested.

Curses. Back to the drawing board. My hand set about stroking Brian's chin again. This truly was a conundrum.

Brian sighed.

“Sorry,” I murmured my second apology.

He put my hand on his leg, “It’s okay.”

There we stood and sat. The Undersiders. Brockton Bay's greatest and most magnificent criminal masterminds, putting our on two years by average criminal expertise to bad use. It was Rachel, genius that she was, that finally had the idea that solved our conundrum for just how we needed to go about humiliating the Protectorate, spitting in the face of The Mayor, and trouncing those meddling Wards again.

"Wait," Rachel had said, pausing mid pet. Her Oxford Comma was left in terrible suspense, watching the hand that had been giving it scratchies go rigid.

"What?" Alec said.

"Maaa!" Cashmere said.

"What if..." Rachel said.

"What?" Alec said.

"What, damn it!" Lisa said, slamming her hand into a very fluffy pillow such that it made little to no sound.

"What if we did the same thing to them, that Taylor did to Lung?"

"I'll go get the stick," I said, preparing myself for the grim task ahead of me.

"Not like that!" Lisa hissed cockroachly.

"Yeah, not with a stick," Rachel said. Her shrunken van sized creatures looked like they were really paying attention now.

"You kept the stick?" Alec laughed.

"Yes! I shouted, offended at the suggestion that I would have lost my George's lance, my Longinus' spear, my hopefully Taylor's Brian's junk at some point."

Alec extended a hand for me to high five. WHICH I DID! And then Lisa laughed for some reason, and Brian started blushing. I scowled, one hand crossed on my chest, the other holding Brian's leg. When we had all settled down again, Rachel spoke, as blunt and to the point as always.

"What if we just show up and dab on them?"


	52. ^.5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Undersiders crash a party thrown by the good guys

My legs hugged the sides of Rimmer's body. I could feel his breathing beneath me as he panted like a motorboat engine that hadn't quite started. I grabbed an ear and tugged, getting a satisfying roar from the dog as it started to move forwards. I got a glimpse of the world below us. Thirty two stories down the cars on the street were visible only as red lights and yellow beams. Sixteen stories down a woman in a black veil and a corset floated by, giving me an uncomfortably personal view. Still, at least I wasn't looking up.

Tattletale clutched me tighter from where she sat behind me. But not in any suggestive way, because she was ace. It was as chaste as a wrestler clinging to another wrestler. In pankration.

Getting up here had been easy enough. Tattletale had looked at a door really hard and then instantly knew that it was unlocked. Had someone been alerted to our presence? Spotted us on camera? No! I asked Tattletale earlier and she said no. Time wasn't short. We had all night here. I wasn't going to school in the morning.

Bitch whistled. Rimmer pounce attacked off the edge of the roof.

Three stories down we hit a patio overlooking the twenty six story Forsberg Gallery's top floor. Then we leaped a further three stories onto the glass roof of the Forsberg Gallery. Crack! Smash! Shatter!

All around us there were people in fancy dress and uniforms and fucking three piece suits. People's monocles dropped into their glasses of champagne.

The protectorate was gathered around a stage at the back of the room. Everyone except Dauntless and Armsmaster was present. Clockblocker and Vista were at the top of the stage, this close to having the key to the city in their hands. Kid Win and Gallant were speaking to some swotty twots in suits. Browbeat and Shadow Stalker were talking to a bunch of plastics. The bitch in the white evening gown giving an oak desk on the other side of the room the evil eye? That was Glory Girl, out of costume.

"What-" someone said, but that was when Brian, Rachel, and Alec all showed up on their own Van sized creatures.

"What do you want!" that someone screamed.

I cleared my throat. "Please leave all overcoats, canes and tophats with the doorman. From that moment you'll be out of place and underdressed."

Our Oxford Comma barked. The capes lept into action! And then Brian turned off the lights for everyone. Just as planned. With a careful bit of assistance from my powerful powers, our van sized creatures unlept back up onto the now repaired glass roof, carrying all of us with them, with one exception. I couldn't hear anything. I couldn't see anything. I did nothing. With any luck, Brian was busy beating up everyone.

A mere minute later, and Brian dispersed the darkness. All of the capes in the room that weren't on our side were in the spot where we had been when the lights went off. They'd beaten each other senseless, mistaking each other for our band of villains. The fools! Truly, Grue's ability to block vision, hearing, radio, radiation, and gaydar was the most powerful weapon in our arsenal. An arsenal that was now one weapon larger!

For you see, while the lights were out Grue had stolen a powerful weapon from the PRT officers that had been schmoozing around the corners of the room. You know that one scene in The Incredibles where Elastigirl uses the password to find out about Syndrome's plan, and then she gets covered in foam? Well the PRT saw that scene and asked Dragon if they could have that foam, but yellow.

The way it expanded, you could coat all but the stretchiest of villains in it and it would disable them. Truly, foam was the most powerful asset in the arsenal of the parahuman response team. Cos otherwise they'd have to shoot people with guns and like, I was 90% sure I could catch those with my power. That's how powerful I was. Hell, I was even resistant to high temperatures and a strong insulator.

Byeah, Brian beat up one of the guns with a confoam thrower and sprayed that over everyone in the room that could have posed a threat to us. And that one redhead that used to bother me or whatever for good measure.

Glory Girl kicked her feet, managing to hit Clockblocker on the back of his head. He must have reflexively used his power, because suddenly Glory Girl, the foam, and all the capes caught in it other than Clockblocker, were frozen in time. Or they were holding still to lull us into a false sense of security!

"No, they're frozen," Tattletale said.

The glass our van sized creatures were standing on splintered and broke, and we fell one story back onto the dance floor.

"Kiddo!" Rachel roared.

"What?" I roared.

"Move!" Rachel roared.

"I'm on a van sized creature!" I roared.

Something thin and needlelike stabbed into my exposed neck. I reached up to pluck it out. Cor, it was a needle. And a bloody big one at that it was.

"Beep," someone said, in a gruff and manly voice. I turned my head around fast to look at the voice's point of origin but I did it too fast and fell off the van sized creature, managing only to see a blur of blue and silver. I had to flop onto my back to see Armsmaster standing sixty feet away from me, the barrel of a blowdart leveled in my direction. His silver face was capable of precious little expression, and I couldn't see his mouth because there was a blowdart in the way.

"Wot was zat for then?" I drawled, making a funny face in his direction.

There was a muffled 'whump' sound, and I felt something like a wave of intensely hot some twat shooting me with another dart. Every hair on the back of my arms, neck, and nards stood on end. I pointed my fingers at him in a little hand gun and fired. Once, twice. I realised that nothing was coming out of the end of my fingers. I tried again. Nothing.

Before I could organise my thoughts, Armsmaster spun about like Ixion at his wheel, like Lynda Carter on set, like that one guy in the Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth movie that pulled off a 180 noscope and then a 360 quickscope in frightening succession.

One dart plinked harmlessly off of Brian's sick arse helmet, another bounced harmlessly off of Kid Win's time frozen face.

"Beep," Armsmaster told us.

Fucking hell mate, we were in a right pickle.


	53. 6.6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Undersiders tick off Armsmaster and escape the party.

"Beep," Armsmaster ordered us.

"No," Brian retorted.

"Bepp," Armsmaster ordered us.

"Tell him to suck a dick!" Alec ordered us, his pose as close to a flounce as possible while still seated on a van sized creature.

"Suck a dick!" every Undersider other than Alec told Armsmaster.

"Beep," Armsmaster retorted.

"Suck Dauntless' dick!" Alec ordered Armsmaster. He made a little jerking off jesture with his hand.

"You're not the best inventor!" Lisa said.

Armsmaster beeped furiously his, blow dart pointing at Lisa. Alec waved his hand lazily, causing the dart to miss and hit one of the mildly inspiring guests.

"Yeah, you're only the seventh most famous member of the Protectorate," Lisa continued. Smoke rose from beneath Armsmaster's helmet beneath our barrage of taunts.

"Hmmm," I thought, a hand on my chin. "Not smart."

That was clearly the last straw. Armsmaster lept into action, unfolding a really long pole with a sword on the end, spinning it around a little to show off, and then charging straight at me. Since we had Alec with us, he tripped of course, but he was really badass so he turned the flip into a forward roll. Except he'd let go of his really long pole with a sword on the end mid roll.

Just when I thought I was safe, I felt a pain unlike any I had felt in a long time. It was the pain of someone punching me really really lightly. I turned around to see Velocity, moving so fast he looked like something out of one of my French Canadian animes. A long of shear concentration was on his face as he continued punching me lots. Which was generally what he did, by all accounts. Ever since he had gained the power to move really fast but also not really accomplish anything, this had been his preferred method of fighting.

"Regent?" I asked, in the span of what must have seemed like years to Velocity. Before he could even react, now Regent was being punched a lot but not really to any effect worth noting.

"Ow," Alec said, as the red blur expertly dodged Alec's attempts to look at him.

"Look out, he's just a distraction!" Lisa yelled.

She was right. Armsmaster had pulled himself off the floor and was heading for me.

I stood up out of the saddle of my van sized creature, cracked my knuckles, and flopped uselessly to the floor. For a moment, I wanted to blame Alec, but then I remembered I was tranquilised and this was usually what people who were tranquilised did. I woozily righted myself in time to dodge the blade of Armsmaster's... I wanted to say polearm but I wasn't sure. I reached out with my power, but nothing happened. I had been hoping to zap Armsmaster with a bolt of lightning like Zeus from Olympus, or else like Sheev from Jimmy Neutron. Instead, Armsmaster bopped me on the head with the flat end of his big stick with a sword on the end.

"Beep beepity bloop," Armsmaster beeped.

"Grue!" I yelled, and he bopped me on the noggin twice again. My head was spinning. Soon, my head was spinning and I was also blinded by the inky clouds of Brian's manly, radar dampeningly strong, musk.

I couldn't see anything, I couldn't hear anything, and I couldn't smell anything other than Brian. I'd need to ask him about replicating this at some point, minus the tranquilisers and possibly the head injury.

Then suddenly, I could.

Velocity was twitching in place, his fingers bending backwards and forwards as his neck jerked back and forth in super speed as he walked himself over to the big pile of time frozen and foam covered capes as he collapsed into the foam like a puppet with its strings cut collapsing into yellow foam as its strings were cut.

Armsmaster was nowhere to be seen.

Oh, no, there he was. I just wasn't looking in the right place. He was beeping furiously at Rachel as he beat up several van sized creatures. Then Alec waved a hand at him, and he was beeping furiously at Rachel as he was beat up by several van sized creatures. That was better. For a moment there I'd thought we were actually in a fight we couldn't just steamroll.

"You alright?" Brian asked.

I swooned. Or flopped, more acurately. But I stood up again and gave a weak thumb's up. Blegh. It was a shame Armsmaster hadn't shot me in the nards. I dunno. Fucking Lung was gonna haunt me till the end of my days. Most horrific body horror I was ever gonna see.

I wasn't doing it on purpose, but with my woozy wobbles I accidentally found myself turning to scan the crowd. Oh hey, that Emma girl was still here. She was looking right at me, and she was looking at me like I had a huge zit in the middle of my forehead that was flipping her off.

"Hey Barnyard!" I yelled at her. "Are you feeling out of place and underdressed?"

She looked at me like the zit had just popped, revealing a pus covered mouth with uneven teeth.

"Cos I'm shrecking this evening already, and I'm..."

Lisa tugged on my shoulder.

"What?" I asked her. She looked at my like the hound's mate from that film about a hound and his mate. "I was gonna say I was loving every minute of it."

"What would Zac Effron do?" Lisa asked me.

I had to think about that one for a minute. For fuck's sake, we were still on that joke weren't we. Fucking hell, I really needed to get some googly eyes on this mask so I could roll them at her. We just humiliated the entire Protectorate and Wards but I guess we needed to leave now. Not like my power was telling me anything right now. Oh shit. Did that mean...

"I know what you're thinking, and no," Lisa told me, shaking her head.

I bobbed my head at her furiously. She shook her head back until I stopped bobbing. Fine. But I'd need to think about this later. I ran back over to hop onto Rimmer's back, and Lisa followed me. Together, our van sized creatures unyeeted themselves back out through the repairing glass yet again. Then fell through the roof again. Fuck me, powers still weren't working too well. Embarassed, we walked our van sized creatures over to the nearest balconey, and then held on as they lept down onto another building conveniently three stories below this one.


	54. 6.7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dauntless, Trainwreck, a clown, and a brick wall all guest star in this update.

Leaping from rooftop to rooftop was not as awesome or efficient as it was on TV, but fucked if we were using the roads in this traffic. No cape is going to sit around and listen to the radio while waiting for a traffic light when they could just bounce randomly from building to building. As Rimmer hopped down from a six story building, the 7th building we'd hopped down onto in a row since we'd left the Forsberg gallery and the last building before we reached the 24/7 Forsburger Gallery takeaway that Alec had wanted us to stop at on the way home. We dropped down from that six story building onto the floor, managing to crush a trash can, an abandoned car that a tinker had stole most of the parts from, and a stray Lung goon that had made it very far outside of their natural habitat.

"Need a leg?" Rachel called out, in her characteristic bluntness. She looked at the very tired Lisa lying in my lap. Poor thing had stayed up too late and got all tuckered out. She looked so peaceful.

"Nah fam," I said.

"Anyone see capes following?" Brian asked.

"I wasn't looking," Alec said, sliding gracefully off the neck of the van sized creature.

"Why don't we ask Lisa?" Brian asked.

"She's asleep tho..." I said, giving her head a soft pat.

"It's okay, she exposits in her sleep," Brian said. "Are we being followed Lisa?"

Lisa sleepily nodded her head.

"Beep," Armsmaster beeped.

I span around, managing to tumble off of Rimmer's back with the shear shear shear unbridled shear speed with which I had span.

Armsmaster looked no worse for wear, even though we'd called him very rude names and then made him fall. He was standing at one end of the otherwise abandoned alley that we'd dropped down into. He even seemed to have cooled down a little.

"NOT SO FAST, CRIMINAL SCUM!" cried a heroic voice. Immediately Armsmaster was simmering again, a heat haze visible above his head. I span about again, kicking Lisa's sleepy head by accident as I turned to face the other side of this alley, where Dauntless was posing heroically. According to wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, Dauntless had the power to make his favourite stuff better every day. Which meant that losers that edited wikipedia in their free time thought he was the bees knees.

He carried a magic stick that let him shoot lightning, a trash can lid that could deflect bullets, and a pair of shoes that once belonged to Bill "MJ" Murray. His helmet and armour was that of a fucking Spartan. The heteronormative ones from 300 that defended democracy and shit.

"GOOD THING WE SHOWED UP, EH ARMSMASTER?" Dauntless shouted.

Brian blanketed the entire area in darkness.

The darkness lasted all of three seconds. A bright fucking light was shining from Dauntless' magic fucking stick, banishing the darkness.

"Hang on a minute here," Brian said, hands on his hips. "I'm calling bullshit on this one."

"He's right!" Alec said, flouncing to Brian's side. "What manner of hero is this powerful?"

I was flabbergasted. But then, I saw Alec wink at me.

"He's..." I started, not quite sure how to continue. "He's right? Why, not even Armsmaster could stop Brian's darkness!"

"TIS A GOOD THING MY MAGIC HELMET LETS ME HEAR YOU PAST THESE EARPLUGS!" Dauntless shouted. "WHY, FAIR ARMSMASTER SUGGESTED I WOULD NEED THEM AGAINST YONDER TATTLETALE, BUT SHE IS ASLEEP."

"A magic helmet?" I said, trying to sound as impressed as I could. Behind me, Armsmaster bubbled like a kettle.

"YES! MY MAGIC HELMET! WHY, WITH IT MY POWERS GROW STRONGER EVERY DAY!"

"He scales so much better to the late game than Armsmaster," Alec said, affecting an air of adoration, his hands clasped together.

"BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME, EVILDOER. IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO MEET JUSTICE!" Dautless shouted. He pointed his lance at me, and I clasped my hands together in prayer.

"What was that?" Brian asked.

"I SAID," Dauntless shouted even louder. "IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO MEET JUSTICE!"

A giant with massive hands and a proportionately large spout on its back burst out of a nearby alley wall, almost crushing Dauntless. It was only his spectacular reaction times that saved him. From out of the hole in the wall that the Phyrexian Gearhulk looking motherfucker had just left strode a big goofy looking clown that I remember from that time someone in my class had needed an example of what a grab bag cape was when they were having an argument. Fuck me, it was Greg wasn't it. Something that dork had said actually turned out to be relevant. Anyway, according to that spineless loser, Circus had hammerkind strife specibus, a fetch modus, and the power to light small fires. She was one of the more successful solo villains in Brockton Bay. If I remembered right, she'd been invited onto the Undersiders, and fuck me Lisa told me Circus was nonbinary. Fuck, fuck, what pronouns did Circus use. Fuck. Fuck it! Not using any!

Circus swung a sledgehammer at Dauntless, but Dauntless blocked it with his trashcan lid. Then Circus made a little fire and breathed into it to shoot it Dauntless like a flamethrower, but Dauntless also blocked it with his trashcan lid. Then Circus made a little flip, span about a little bit, gathered up a lot of fire in Circus' hands, pointed it at Dauntless, and then the iron giant thing just squished Dauntless while he was busy watching Circus.

"CHOO CHOO!" the iron giant thing yelled, pumping its fist.

Armsmaster made a happy cheerful beep, which was cut off as one of the losers from the Travellers stepped out of the same alley wall hole. The Travellers hocked a brick at Armsmaster but like, really fast, and Armsmaster made a worried beep as he presumably ducked or something.

Lisa made a happy little tired noise as she woke up.

"What's happening?" she asked.

I looked down at her.

"A giant made of metal just saved us from Dauntless and Armsmaster."

"That's Trainwreck, a fairly thuggish villain that hasn't made much of a name for himself. He's a coal driven cyborg transformed by his powers in much the same way as The Amazing Newt Boy and Gregor Samsa the Snail."

"That's good to know," I said. "Is that why he looks like Thomas the Tank Engine?"

Armsmaster beeped angrily.

"My power says no," Lisa said. She turned to look at the others, then continued. "And that's Circus, any pronouns."

I breathed a sigh of fucking relief as Lisa continued continuing. "She's one of the more successful solo villains around Brockton Bay, a burglar and thief both quick and versatile enough to win or slip away if she crosses paths with a hero."

Armsmaster was engaged in a heated battle somewhere behind me, dodging brick after brick from The Terriffic Tosser or whatever brick boy was called.

"Ballistic," Lisa yawned.

I turned my head in time to see Armsmaster get steamrolled by Trainwreck. The giant was big enough and quick enough that just dodging slightly to the side wasn't probably gonna help and Alec sorta just innocently flicking his hand probably didn't help things either.

A smooth, self assured voice with the combined evil of a thousand lesser Coils broke the silence that followed in the train man's wake. "I assumed, Tattletale, that when you asked to meet with me at the conclusion of your task, that you wouldn't be bringing the heroes with you."

Dressed in a white bodysuit with a black snake across it, Coil slinked out of the hole in the wall. Where Alec flounced with a playful and sultry manner, Coil flounced like a predatory flamingo. Hah! Gotcha there didn't I. All flamingos are predatory. They eat shrimp. That's how they get pink.

Tattletale made a cute and tired noise. "Sowwy."

Coil glanced around, then seemed to come to a decision. "No, I don't think you are."

"I really am..." Tattletale said. She sounded very sincere and very tired.

"I will forgive you this time, Undersiders," Coil flounced again, sharp and angular. He was behind Circus now, and if his shitty zorb suit costume could have betrayed any expressions I would be sure that he was glowering at us. "But for now I have the rumblings in my tummy, and I have waited long enough for you. We shall fetch our order from the Forsburger, and then, then we shall all have much to discuss."


	55. 6.8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coil holds reality hostage to force the Undersiders to cooperate.

We didn’t dally, stopping only to let that loveable bitch order her van sized creatures to return to our hideout and shrink them down to their doggy disguises. Once that was done, we all rushed to the Forsburger Gallery. It wasn't too different from a regular burger joint in Brockton Bay, in that it was kinda run down and also sold kebabs. All in all, it gave the general impression of something exceedingly unhealthy for you.

Once that was done, we all rushed to Coil's armoured limousine. It wasn't too different from a regular limousine, but it was armoured. I wondered if Coil would have us killed if we spilled burger grease on the interiors. Coil had to pull his mask down a little to expose his mouth and let him eat. I could tell nothing about him other than the fact that he was black. And possibly that he had been wearing a mask too much after greasy food cos that was some bad acne right there.

"I wish," Coil shaid, licking his fingers of kebab juice and garlic mayo, "To perform a small demonstration."

He reached behind my ear and pulled out a quarter. Consider my mind blown.

"Catch it," he told me, then flipped it my way. I caught it.

"Heads," Coil said.

I looked at the coin. Oh my god.

"Holy shit, this madlad controls coins," I said, scarcely believing my eyes.

Coil buried his face into his hand, getting trace garlic mayo on his otherwise clean white costume. "No, no," Coil laughed. "I wish."

"My power says that's not what his power is," Lisa said, shaking her head slowly as she dipped another chip in her pot of curry sauce.

"That was simply me showing off. I'm also very lucky. My power is much less useful than that."

"Well what is it?" I asked.

"Imagine if you caught that coin, and it was a tails."

"Yeah..." I said.

"And imagine I didn't want you to have a tails. Imagine I wanted you to have heads. Imagine, that I watched you flip both coins, and I could end the version of this world where you had tails."

"I wouldn't be opposed to having tails..." I said.

"Me neither," Alec said.

"Nor me," said Lisa, grimacing. Lisa's face went very pale. She left her chip in the curry sauce pot. "But I don't think that's what he's getting at."

"I end universes," Coil said. He shrugged somewhat casually.

I laughed a little, but Lisa cut me off with an elbow to the chest.

"My power says he's telling the truth," she said.

"So we're all dead in the world where I got tails?" I asked.

"No," Lisa said, shaking her head slowly.

"Oh god no. Why would I use a power like that to flip coins good? You see Undersiders, this entire universe is all a dream. In the real world, I work a normal job. We aren't meeting at all. There is no criminal empire. All of this is in my imagination, and at any moment I can simply wake up and all of you will cease to exist."

"Impossible," Rachel said. "The brainpower you’d need to create and maintain a distinct branch of the universe would need a head five times the usual size to contain it all."

"Or a body five times as tall?" Coil replied.

"Fuck me," Brian said.

"Later," Alec and I said.

Coil smiled a greasy smile.

"You sit here where the Travellers sat, eating the same burgers that Trainwreck shoveled down his furnace and Circus refused to eat because he's avoiding this sort of food. You've heard the same existential proposal they have. I want to be a criminal mastermind. I want to take over the city. And if I die, or if I fail, then everyone you know will cease to exist."

"That can't be how your power works," I said, shaking my head incredulously.

Coil raised his fingers, as if about to snap them. Lisa gasped.

"I don't get it," Rachel said. "Wouldn't some version of us still exist?"

"Yes," Coil said. "But this you right now would never be. No memories. No afterlife."

"Fuck me," I said. Brian muttered something under his breath.

"I think you're all neat," Coil said, smiling the vulpine smile of a fox that knows a hen that can do his taxes for him. "I already have my sources inside the Protectorate and Wards-"

What the fuck.

"-And I have the next mayor in my pocket. You may have met him already."

What the actual fuck. Coil sniggered a little.

"All I need is to control all of the city's villains too. And you're villains. I think you're reasonable. I think you'd prefer me to the Status Quo. And what's the alternative? I think you don't want a city ran by racists."

We all sort of shrugged and nodded in agreement amongst ourselves. He had a point.

"You may have wondered why I was foolish enough to risk my face at that little gathering of ours at that nondescript little bar. I thought it would be fun. It would be a shame if I had to start this whole criminal empire for a third time, but I'm happy taking risks every now and again to keep myself from getting bored."

"A third time?" I spat. I couldn't help myself. Lisa nodded at me.

"Don't worry, we haven't done this before. Why, this is the first time I've even spoken to you, Taylor."

Fuck me, that wasn't much of a relief. I tried to wipe a little sweat from the brow of my mask and failed. The limousine sliced to a halt, like a sharpened knife through pickled ginger

"Anyway, I think you all get the picture," Coil said. He reached over to pluck the chip from Lisa's curry sauce. He took a big bite from it, and I watched him chew it both slovenly and menacingly.

"What was tonight then?" Brian asked, when Coil was licking his fingers free of salt again.

"You wanted something to do?" Coil shrugged. "I'm happy to pay you for a job well done. Anyway, I'll be in touch, Undersiders. This is your stop."

We departed the vehicle. We binned all the bags and boxes from the Forsburger. We were on the west end of the docks, judging by how far the water was and how close we were to the ominous cloud wreathed mountains that loomed about the city on every side, and echoed with the screams of the damned whenever the fog came in.

I looked out across the bay, at that big building I didn't like. The Protectorate thought they were protecting the people? Well if we were appeasing Coil, we were protecting the whole world here. Maybe even aliens in some far off planet. Everyone in this version of history, ever since the moment Coil had started using his power. We were all his hostage right now.

I stared out at that big glowy building and remembered the days when it was first being built. I'd seen shiny things in the middle of the water and thought it had to be good. I reached out with my power, felt the ripple of the water ripple and screaming of the canon. I could feel the path ahead of me again.

I thought back to those all too brief drugged moments. Armsmaster couldn't know what he'd given me there. More than usual, I hadn't known what I was doing. It was like being in Lattehouse Funf again. Except I'd been sleepy and tranquil instead of fucking wired from all that organic coffee and gluten free non dairy carrot cake.

"Hey Kiddo!" Brian yelled.

I shook myself out of my quandary. The rest of the Undersiders were waiting for me.

"Give me a moment," I said. I turned back briefly and yeeted Coil's quarter at the Protectorate headquarters with all my power. And then we all cartwheeled back to our shitty brick warehouse home.


	56. 69

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor has a heartwarming reonion with her father.

I walked around the back of my house and reached into my pocket for my keys. Before I could get them, my dad yelled "The Door is open."

"Taylor. It is good to see you safe and sound, Taylor." My dad looked tired, as though he had lived hundreds of years since I last saw him.

I gave him a brief hug. "What happened?"

"I was with Kurt and Lacey at the basketball court. There was... a door. We lost our ball through it, and followed."

"And then what happened?"

Dad shook his head slowly. "A thousand doors. A pile of meat, hands reaching in every direction."

"And then what happened?"

"A woman with a hat gave me my ball back."

"Ah well that's alright then," I said.

"They were feeding people with these great tubes connected to the eighteen breasts of a great horrible slug, and we were all invited to drink from it," my dad intoned.

I shrugged as I pulled off my sweatshirt, made sure my keys, phone, knife, and Lung's wallet were all in the pockets, and then hung it up on the doornnob. The sweatshirt, not Lung's wallet.

"I see," I said. "Did you stay there for long?"

"No," my dad said. "When I returned, my watch said it had been minutes. But it felt like it was for years."

"Ah," I nodded. "Yeah, I know the feeling mate. Interdimensional travels a right ballache."

“I’m going to go to my room, if that’s alright? I’m kind of wiped.”

I shook my head, "I'd rather you stayed to talk."

"Can we do it tomorrow morning?" my father asked.

"FINE!" I said, exasperated. My father slunk off towards the liquor cabinet. He fingered the hidden catch beneath the cabinet door, and the whole cabinet swung open to reveal the hidden cache where we kept a copy of the bible. My father opened it up. I wish I knew to what part.

"Job!" Lisa said.

I span about, shook.

"Your door was unlocked," Lisa said, waggling her eyebrows at me chiropterarily.

"What do you want from me?" I asked, my eyes steely and focussed.

"My power says you don't want to stay at your house anymore," Lisa said, twirling a set of car keys on her rudest finger.

"I don't?" I said.

"My power says you feel uncomfortable and confused. We should leave now."

"What about my dad?" I asked.

"I thought you were staying with us because you wanted to be independent?"

"Well yeah but..."

"My power says you should leave with me."

Oh for fuck's sake. "Well my power says that while I have to eventually leave with you having had an awkward conversation with my father, I don't have to just barge out of here without talking to my him about his feelings. He's concerned for me."

"Go with your friend Taylor," my father said. "Only they can save you from the Twig."

"He clearly doesn't want to talk to you right now," Lisa said. My dad closed the secret cache and nabbed a bottle of gin from the actual cabinet. I stared at him disapprovingly until he put it back.

"You don't have to be so spooky about it Lisa, and I don't have to leave right away."

I fell over, and an intangible... wait, its only intangible if it can't be felt. An invisible force dragged me outside by the foot.

"See you later dad. Don't drink too much."

Dad grunted at me. I was pretty sure I heard gulping.

Shame. I'd sorta hoped to have a better last conversation with him. Still, that was another quick chapter wunnit? And another arc. Flying by, these are. I'd be beating up that yuge dicked gold tosser in no time.


	57. Interlude 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lung is put in the world's biggest hole.

Lung's dick hurt. It was a phantom pain.

His hands were buried in a pair of buckets filled with that damn pastel yellow foam. His legs were buried in a pair of buckets filled with that damn pastel yellow foam. His leg was buried in a pair of buckets filled with that damn pastel yellow foam. It would have been intolerably heavy if it weren't for the fact that Lung was only part man. The man part.

He couldn't see the rest of the restraints, because he had a bucket on his head. The irony was, the bucket would have sufficed. Even a blindfold and some very calming music. His strength would not come to him unless he could tell he was in danger. A day earlier and he might have not needed a blindfold. They had not needed it when the police came for him. How ironic, that he had been high then. Even now, his eyes had only just recovered from having been poked very hard.

Something lifted him up. There was a hissing noise, and then the bucket on his head was lifted up and off.

He was arranged in front of a big black square inside of what looked like a massive underground bunker. Everything was concrete, except the big black square, a metal arm holding him, a truck, and three other people, and the three metal arms holding them. One was a small woman with yellow feathers, one was a small woman without yellow feathers, and one was a large bird with blue feathers.

A big CGI picture of a lizard appeared on the screen, prompting a horrified squawk from the bird. The picture of the lizard spoke, her snout flapping open and closed as she did, with a thick cockney woman's accent.

"Prisnah foive hand red and noin ee noin, codename Lung. PRT says yore a Brute 4 to 9"

"Forty nine?" Lung asked. That seemed a very big number, but he could see why they would have given it to someone as mighty as he.

"Nah, see it means yore I've a a broot fore ore a broot noin."

A disappointment for the dragon.

"Are you from England?" Lung asked. He would have scratched his head if he did not have buckets for hands.

"Naw."

"She's Dragon!" the small woman without feathers said. Lung did not look at her face.

"I am dragon," Lung said.

"Nah, I'm dragon, yore Lung."

"Lung means dragon."

"Yeah but I was Dragon first."

"I was Lung first."

"Alright alright keep yer dick on."

"She's the most powerful tinker in the world!" the featherless woman said.

Lung did not react. The featherless woman continued. "She designed the Birdcage and much of the gear the PRT uses, including the containment foam! She's head and shoulders above any of the other tinkers that go out in power armour, and wears a different suit every time, and her stuff is so advanced that a group of criminals that got away with stealing a damaged suit of armour are now operating as top of the line mercenaries."

"Hmmmm?" went the blue bird.

"The Dragonslayers," the woman with feathers said.

"Aaaaahh."

"Prisoner Six hunnerd," Dragon boomed. "Canary. Master 8, which is what ya got yer boyfriend to do innit. They said ya needed a muzzle but yer not a dog and there ain't anybody ear you can do that too am I riot?"

The woman with the feathers blinked a few times. "Hi?"

The claw holding onto her fell out of its socket.

"Cor, do me a favour, don't escape or anyfin, this whole place is fallin apart. I'll come back for you in a minnit."

"English people do not talk like this," Lung said, shaking his head slowly.

"Naw but its fun to do. Talking ye olde English goes with the ole Dragon thing dunnit."

"No," Lung said. He would have crossed his arms if he did not have buckets for hands. She did not even look like a dragon. No whiskers.

"Prisoner 601, Bakuda. Tinker 6, specialty in making bombs."

"Hmmm," the blue bird whimpered. "Perhaps this Bakuda, she is why Chamberlain's city was exploding, yes?"

"Yeah, that was me," Bakuda said.

"Do you like ABBA?" Lung asked.

"No," Bakuda said. Lung shook his head slowly. A pity.

"And prisoner-" Dragon began, but there was a thud. Her snout turned, and Lung followed her snout to look towards Canary, who was thudding along the floor in her bucket feet. Dragon continued. "Prisoner 602, the Chamberlain."

"Hmmmm."

"The Chamberlain."

"Yessss."

"Yes, you. No powers, just a case 53. I'm done, into the ole with the lot of you."

"Wait, wait!" the Chamberlain squawked as the metal arm holding him slowly pulled him forwards. A paper thin line on the concrete slowly widened as a trap door in the floor opened.

"Our chances of escaping are pretty slim," Bakuda said. "The Baumann Hole in the Ground is a structure so complex they hired an artificial intelligence just to write paragraphs about how complex it is. Its inside of a hollowed out mountain, the walls of which are lined with layers of a ceramic of my own design, each such layer separated by damn pastel yellow foam. And that's just the mountain. The prison itself is called the Birdcage cos its in the middle of the really big hole, hanging only by a bunch of big tubes. Both the interior of the tubes and the mountain is a vacuum filled with drones with guns."

"Oi, that's my favourite part that is!" Dragon said. The CGI snout adopted a very annoyed flop. "What's the point in running a great big hole if I don't getta talk bout it."

"Surely we can make deal, yes? Dragon!" the Chamberlain cried, as the big hole drew ever nearer. Soon Bakuda and Lung were suspended above the hole too.

"Mate nobody gets out of the Birdcage," Dragon said, shaking her CGI snout. Somewhere behind Lung came the thud of another of Canary's footsteps.

"I have been in big holes before," Lung said.

"Oi bet you ave," Dragon said.

*

Later, inside the only prison in America that isn't a form of slave labour, Lung walked with draconic confidence to the hole, a name with meaning as it referred to the fact that it was a hole in the wall. A group of men were on guard on one side of the hole. A group of women were on guard on the other side of the hole. One determined person was sitting on the edge of the hole. They sat there some days, which is something that a friend of mine would call very relatable.

"Who're you?" one of the women asked Lung.

"I hold things for you, but you cannot see me," Lung said.

The women had a huddle for a little bit, until eventually one of them stood back out from the huddle. She was a Striker with a mouthful of teeth that looked like teeth. "You're Lung, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"You're new. That's the only way I would have got that one. Where ya from?"

"The Cell block with the loud man that likes melting faces," Lung said.

"Pffft. Sucks to be you," the person sitting on the edge of the hole said.

"Nah, I meant with your accent."

"Japan," Lung said. "Kyushu."

"Oof," the person sitting on the edge of the hole said.

"Why do you want to cross the hole?" the striker asked.

"There is girl I want to see, she makes bombs."

"String Theory?"

"No."

"Night Witch?"

"No."

"Bakuda?"

"Yes."

"Not gonna happen."

"Why not?" Lung asked, respectfully.

"She made a new hole," the person sitting on the edge said. Lung looked at them. The person shrugged.

"Where does hole go to?" Lung asked, after an uncomfortably long time spent looking at the person and expecting elaboration.

"Outside."

"I see," Lung said.


	58. 7.1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel and Taylor go hang out together.

7.1

Brian was quicker than a guy his height should have been. His thigh caught me in the side as he brought his leg around, which hurt. He flipped himself over in my direction and straddled me. I grabbed at his shirt, and he grabbed at that wrist too. I'd succeeded in getting him on the ground. Any sense of victory I might have felt was short lived, because he was so much more prepared for what came next than I was.

"Mmm," was the most coherent response I could manage.

"I'm surprised you're up for this, you two," Lisa commented. We both span about with enough speed to tumble violently over. If we weren't already on the floor, we would have sprawled onto the floor. Instead, this double negative caused us to right our positions.

We stared at Lisa. She smiled at us.

"Aren't your legs sore from jumping around last night?"

"Is everything okay Lisa?" Brian asked her.

"Yeah," Lisa said. She put a plateful of buttered bagels down for each of us and cartwheeled out of the room.

"I know we were sparring..." I said. "But I could really go for a bagel."

"What chew shay?" Brian said through a mouthful of bagel. A few crumbs decorated his perfect chin. Damn it. This was love.

There came a knocking at the door that Lisa had left open. Alec swaggered in without waiting for a response.

"I come bearing coffee and breakfast," Alec pronounced.

"We've got bagels," I said.

"Yes, but I've got donuts."

Donuts! The greatest bagels of them all. A donut was a type of fried confection or desert food, popular in many countries on Earth Betta Us Than You. For decades it had been a secret kept only by wizards, but now everyone with a fryer could make one.

"So," Brian addressed us, as we all walked to the couches. "Do you want to talk about your father more Alec?"

Alec opened his mouth to speak, but Lisa interjected. "Heartbreaker is what you get when you live in a society where anyone can have powers. He can manipulate emotions and uses it selfishly."

"That's not what I'd call what he uses it for," Alec said, his mouth forming a :/

"Well what would you call it?"

"The same thing that means I can't watch Smallville anymore," Rachel said, stroking Cashmere's pink and fuzzy... I want to say cashmere, but I think that's only if you skin a goat. She was petting the goat.

"Damn," I muttered. I'd forgotten about that for a hot five minutes.

"My power now means I know all of Alec's backstory," Lisa proclaimed. "I now no longer need you to elaborate further."

"But I want to talk about it!" Alec pleaded. "It's all tragic and heartbreaking."

Lisa adjusted a set of nonexistent glasses. "I have all the details now."

"Please don't tell me any more," I said.

"Are you sure?" Lisa and Alec said in unison.

Rachel started to slink away, pink goat in hand.

"Take me with you!" I mouthed.

Rachel shook her head at me.

"Please?" I mouthed.

Rachel rolled her eyes and waved me over. Togethere, we slunk on outta there.

"You see," Lisa began. "Heartbreaker-"


	59. 7.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor meets a lot of dog shaped van sized creatures.

Oh god, the author was drunk when he wrote this.

I felt the glowering hatred of the author burn down on me. Fuck. Looks like I had some out of date information on that one.

That bitch led the way as we traced a perfectly straight path through the docks, using my power to break down walls and permit us to travel as the Alexandria flies. We'd let Cashmere go before we'd left our headquarters. Brockton Bay was a dangerous place, full of wild Lung goons and case 53s that would tear a goat apart given half a chance.

Glancing at Rachel, I could see how she was more at ease like this. Letting me go first. Trying to break down walls with your head wasn't as easy when you didn't have powerful powers like mine. The lines of Rachel's face were softer because she was in the background and less effort needed to go into animating her. Her T shirt today was a crop top that said crop in really small letters and TOP in really bold letters, worn above a camoflauge pattern kilt and below a Bloo hoodie.

She glanced my way, and a shadow of irritation touched her expression.

"Argh!" Rachel yelped, waving her hands to try and get the shadow off.

"Hold still!" I yelled. Rachel did not hold still. I had to tackle her to the ground, and I had to be gentle about it too cos I was pretty sure she had puppies in her jacket and I didn't want to crush them.

"Get it off!" Rachel yelped. The shadow was tugging at her cheeks with its four pincerlike claws. I made to grab at it but one of the claws pinched me really hard and it hurt, so I withdrew for a moment and instead did that thing I did where I made things melt by thinking hard at them that I did to that one dude in the bank. And those donuts. The shadow withered and faded, smoking off into smoke.

"That was close," I said, looking around for any more shadows of irritation, or any shadows of nuisance or peevishness.

"We're almost to my secret van sized creature shelter," Rachel panted, shaking her head solemnly.

"Is the shelter itself van sized?" I asked.

No, was the answer. It was a building partially constructed over a giant skeleton left from the 78th time Mark fought the Brockton Bay Brigade. Cement and plaster mixed with really really big bones. Martian redweed had grown in the cracks of the flooring and the corners of the room, making the room kind of dank looking even if it was dry.

"BORK!" a shrunken van sized creature borked. It had been turned into a black labradory assistant, complete with safety glasses.

Rachel opened her hands and borked, and soon an entire plethorantheon of monsters that had been turned into adorable dogs slunk from their hiding places, surrounding us and being generally happy to be on screen.

"Bitch, how many dogs do you need?" I asked, doing my best not to descend into a frenzy of cute noises and petting.

"All of them," Rachel said, a solemn look on her face. "They're all strays or rescue creatures. They were being chased down and killed for being monsters. Starved by families that only wanted their crocodiles to be eight feet long, not eighteen."

"Oh," I said.

"Rimmer was a twenty foot shadow of self loathing when I found him. The owner wanted something scary to show off to the neighbours and the stupid parents obliged him. When I found him, he was almost dead."

"Poor Rimmer."

"The owner," Rachel snarled.

"Oh."

My stomach gurgled.

Rachel looked at me, horrified.

"I'm hungry?" I winced.

"That's not hunger Taylor."

"My stomach gurgled again." Fuck. Did I say that part?

"I think you have a Worm," Rachel said.

"What?" came my retort. No. Impossible.

"You're thinner than some of the van sized creatures I find. All I see you eating is burgers and donuts. You drink coffee with whipped cream."

My stomach gurgled louder. "I'll be fine. I just need another three kebabs and a bag of chips."

"I think the Worm is eating your food."

"The Worm is my power!" I spat, backing away from Rachel and managing to trip over a beodog. It borked at me from behind its exoskeletal face.

"You need to get that looked at," Rachel said, approaching me slowly and carefully. I started to skitter away on my back, crawling up the half complete wall when I bumped into it.

"The Worm must be fed!" I spat. A drop of something red fell from my face onto Rachel's forehead.

"Does Lisa know?" Rachel asked, without wiping her brow clean. The red dot on her forehead leered at me.

"Of course she knows! How could she not?"

"The Worm will kill you," Rachel said bluntly. I laughed, a harsh and grating noise. What did she know of this gnawing Worm? I detached from the ceiling, landing on my feet like a fox. I span about to face her again.

"I am dead with it. I am worse than dead without it. A coffee drinking zombie. It doesn't matter if I die in two years. At least I'll have had friends! Friends that I can explore lockers with instead of being shoved into lockers by. Friends that can feed the Worm with me. You're my friend, bitch. Now why don't you tell me about some of the formerly van sized creatures."

Rachel's face broke into a forlorn frown. She picked up a tall and thin dog, holding it the way you were supposed to hold dogs. It made a small and pitiable noise of weakness.

"This is serious," she said.

"No! This is a fun, calm chapter, and we are going to bond. That is what shall happen. There can be no escaping this."

"His name is Sirius," she said. I scowled at her. "He came from a home where his dad loved him. But one day his mommy didn't come home, and he didn't know where she was. His daddy wasn't around to care for him because he wasn't feeling too good. And Sirius left, but if Sirius' dad gets better maybe he'll pet Sirius again."

A dog that looked more like a coyote than a dog wandered by her legs. I glared down at it.

"And this one is Pretty. She came from a home where neither of her owners were around very much. They didn't teach her any tricks, and she was too old when new people found her. It was hard for her to learn things, but she tried. Sometimes she doesn't get conversations, but she has people she cares about too."

A fox walked up to my legs despite the wide berth the dogs had been given me since I'd left the ceiling. It yipped at me.

"What about this one?" I asked, pointing a finger at it. The fox yipped at me again.

"That's Mona. She won't shut up, but we love her."


	60. Sieben.Drei

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor kills what just might be Nazis.

Fuck me, I forgot to say I was gonna go get some greek last chapter. I bought two wraps for me, a dozen or so for the van sized creatures, and one small pita with hummus for Rachel from "Holding out for a Gyro", a store that had a giant slab of meat named "The Dauntless" after our local hero, Dauntless, who had once called it the best place to wander past while drunk at 4am.

Between waking up scarily early because I'd tried to get an early night and that horrific battle we'd had with Lord Buckethead, it felt like stuff always seemed to get scary at 4am.

I was relieved when I got back to Rachel's secret creature lair and the gyros were still warm. A dozen or so dogs greeted me, and I tossed them their gyros and their plastic knives and forks. I navigated my way through them to that bitch, who'd been sitting on a throne made of bricks. She was stroking a dog's head menacingly.

"You should never own a dog," Rachel said.

"Why not?"

"Because you're smart. Most dog owners are-"

"Fuck off Rachel, you're not finishing that sentence."

She frowned at me, glaring passionately. I shook my head. Not today. I ate my gyro slowly, making sure to keep my eyes trained on her. Around us the dogs munched on their gross greek stuff. I'd opted for sweet chilli instead of garlic mayo. Their breath was going to stink after this.

The sound of a breaking bottle disturbed our peace.

Rachel's head bobbed up, a confused look on her face as she sniffed the air.

"Hey. Ey. Ey. Eh. Rachel. What's going on?"

"Follow me," she told me, as she bolted from her throne. Together we wandered off to face seven or so people. They ranged from thirty one or so to twelve and three months or so in age. It was really hard to tell what gang they were in. Half of them had black hair died blonde, one of them had white dreadlocks, and one of them had a number 83 basketball jersey. Like, what gang has 12 and three months or sos old girls with catholic cross necklaces?

"We told you to get out of here," the thirty one or so year old man with a carton of beer bottles said. He threw it at Rachel and missed. The bottle shattered against one of the giant bones like, twenty feet to the right of Rachel. We both stared at it. It was impressively shit.

Wait! Of course! Impressively shit! They were clearly working for Uber and Leet. That's why they were all dressed like gangsters from one of the bad Grand Theft Auto games!

"Yeah," the christian girl said. "We don't take to kindly to people that don't fit our neurotypical and heteronormative worldview round here."

Wait! Of course! Heteronormative worldview! They were from that catholic school with the long and complicated name I can't be arsed to say again! That's why they were wearing so many crosses and had all sorts of numbers that looked like bible verses tattooed on them.

"I was here first," Rachel grumbled.

"Doesn't matter. We're gonna be here last," a seventeen year old or so woman with a shaved head said.

"For a thousand years baby," roared the thirty or so year old guy.

"Ohhhhhh," I said, finally getting it. "You're all Nazis."

"We prefer race realists," the twelve or so year old girl said, in the moment before I made her head explode.

"What the fucking shit?" said the thirty or so year old, at the same time that the seventeen or so year old said "Was ins das Holle?" in der schlechtest deutsch das ich hatte gehort. Und mein deutsch ist unvorstellbar.

The thirty or so year old lobbed a bottle of Weisse Bier mit Grapefruit at me. I caught it with my power and thought about lobbing it back at him, but like, I mean, I thought about it a little and realised that I could just make his head explode too. I turned my power from one to the next, and though some tried to run and some tried to fight, in the end they all with one long cry of "Nain!" after die other.

Rachel made a worried noise like that a minivan sized creature makes when a monster truck sized creature is walking past with a mouthful of something metal and van shaped.

"Hmm?" I said, taking my eyes off the pile of assorted meats to look her way.

"What on the fuck was that?" Rachel said briskly.

"They're nazis. I'm not spending a whole chapter chatting to them."

"So you killed them all?"

"I skipped straight to the point. We'd just get more of the same, just with more slurs. They were going to leave sooner or later, but I just want to hang out with you right now. No random intrusions from gangsters or bugs. And no Lisa. She's been acting really weird lately and I need some time away from her."

"I'm going inside to pick up shit," Rachel said, turning away from me.

"Does this mean we don't get to hang out?" I asked. I took a step to follow her, but managed to slip on a stray piece of fascist.


	61. Sieben.Fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we find out the secret identities of all of the neo nazi supervillains.

Brian arrived as I was trudging through the streets with a few full garbage bags. My hair was matted with something and I'd neglected to take off my mask I guess. Not really the image of me I wanted him to see.

"Hey Taylor!" Brian yelled all friendly like. he was wearing his costume, which meant he looked just like a motorcyclist. By contrast, I was wearing my costume, which meant I looked just like me.

"Hey!" I said, standing to try and obscure the trash bags.

"Is that German beer?" he asked me. I nodded my head, glad for his being distracted.

He walked over and picked one up out of the puddle of soapy water it was lying in.

"I love this stuff. Alec won't stop going on about getting Radler the time his dad took him to Germany."

"I kinda don't want to hear about it," I said.

"He was on a business meeting with Gesellschaft to-"

"I really don't want to hear about it," I said, a little firmer. Brian shrugged, and fished a bottle opener out of his pocket with which to open his bottle. Then he extended the bottle cap towards me.

I looked at it. He looked at me. I looked at him. He looked at my trash bags.

I smiled nervously beneath a mask that I was almost certain still wasn't clean of head juice, and dropped the bags briefly. I opened the lid of one barely a crack.

"Eurgh," Brian said, waving a hand in front of his motorcycle helmet. "What's Rachel been feeding them?"

"Leftover greek, bit of german catholic..." I said.

He chucked the bottle cap in and I closed up the gap behind it. He lifted his visor off with one hand, the other bringing a sip of bier zu er lips.

"Offer to sleep with him!" Rachel yelled.

I was glad that my mask hid any blush I might have been making. Brian, for his part, had no such protection. His face looked mighty embarassed as he blurted out a mighty call of "What the hell?"

"You like her?" Rachel yelled.

"Yeah?" Brian said, taking another sip of bier, presumably to steady his nerves.

"Well offer to sleep with her!" Rachel yelled, her hands held up to her mouth that we could hear her from her thrown. Brian spat out his bier again.

It was then that I received a text, causing Lung's phone to play a brief reprise by The Vapours. Soon Rachel's phone was raising the Baha Men's infamous rallying cry, and Brian's was playing the pleasant mating cry of fans of Simon and Garfunkel.

I checked my text. I7 wa5 Li5a, 5aying 5eriou5 5hi7 wa5 going down again i7 5eemed.

"Yeah no, I'm with Taylor and Rachel," Brian said, presumably having been called by Lisa. "It's Lisa," Brian told us, looking away from the phone as he covered it with one hand. "She says you already got her texts, and that we all need to give Rachel at least another ten months before taking her back to the pound."

Rachel growled at him.

"Its time to walk fast!" Brian said, and so we all (except Rachel) walked really fast until we got back to the loft where Alec was clutching Cashmere very tightly while the goat gnawed uselessly at a stray gold bar that I'd left in the spot where the remote control used to be. It wasn't a good remote control, but it was still better than the one we'd had before.

"What's wrong?" Brian said, walking to Alec's side.

"Brockton Bay's most handsome and most eligible bachelor is a fascist!" Alec bleated. I could see now that he had tears running into the pillow of pink fuzz he was clinging to. "I had a crush on a Neo Nazi!"

"Its okay Alec," Brian said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Is that why he wore so much Hugo Boss?" Alec sobbed. Lisa nodded her head up and down, and was about to say something when I put a hand lazily over her mouth. I shushed her, watching intently as Brian fussed over Alec.

When a minute or so had passed, I turned to Lisa.

"What happened?" I asked.

Lisa pointed at the television, and I turned to view the muted screen. Big bold red letters informed me that all of Empire Eighty Eight's secret identities had been leaked to the public.

"But who could have done this?" I proclaimed, shook most fiercely.

Lisa pointed at herself and smiled at me most fiercely.

"What, all of them?"

Lisa nodded.

"What about the unwritten rules?" I said. "Surely even nazis deserve to be... to be..." I couldn't keep a straight face that long. I laughed, and Lisa quietly giggled. I extended her a hand to high five, and, still giggling, I turned my attention, back, to the television, that it might continue, to elucidate, as to just who was who. Thankfully local news stations were just going all out on this.

Krieg, the man who wore an SS uniform everywhere, was secretly James Fleischer, a perfectly ordinary rich white man who was in charge of a pharmaceutical chain. There was a photo of him smiling with Nigel Farage while he had his gas mask off. Then a picture of Nigel Farage wearing the gas mask and giving a big thumbs up while Krieg smiled even harder.

Max Anders, the richest man in Brockton Bay, was secretly the Empire's leader, the Kakistocratic Kaiser. He'd already issued a public statement about how this was all fabricated news and the mainstream media was attacking him and all of his friends from work.

Rune was an ordinary teen girl with concerns about LGBTQ ideology, Victor was a member of the Brockton Bay police department, this one wrestler with tattoos of wolves and swastikas was secretly the nazi wirewolf with the exact same tattoos... I really didn't give too much of a shit about the majority of them but it was kinda cool that they were all about to get their lives colossally fucked up.

"You told everyone?" I asked Lisa.

She shrugged.

"You can talk now."

"I emailed Coil the identities of every Nazi in Brockton Bay, and he accidentally CC'ed one of his henchmen, and she added a smiley face emoji and forwarded it to a friend, who emailed a friend, and now everyone knows and someone down the line added a little reaction gif from The Office and wrote that that was what Kaiser looked like right now."

"That's amazing!" I said.

"My power told me it was pretty funny," Lisa said.

"No, I meant the part where everyone knows who all the fascist supervillains are now."

"Oh yeah, that's pretty cool too."

"The whole of Empire Eighty Eight are going to want to kill us!" Brian said, still leaning on Alec's shoulder.

I looked between Brian and Alec and scoffed a little

"For reasons other than the usual," Brian added weakly.

I shrugged. "Look at it this way. Kaiser and his twentyish super powered thugs are going to be pissed off with us."

"That doesn't sound reassuring," Alec said.

"And that means they're going to pick fights with us."

"Really not reassuring me," Alec added, squeezing a Maaaaaa out of Cashmere.

"And that means I get to kill them all when they pick a fight with us," I said, making the universal jazz hand gesture of ta-da.

"Taylor!" Brian said.

"Brian!" I said.

"Please tell me you're not serious."

"Why?" I said, raising an eyebrow beneath my mask.


	62. Sieben.Funf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Taylor finds out what redlining and double Nazis are in the hell world she lives in.

"It's too dangerous to stay here," Brian spoke, after a chapter break's worth of time.

"Why?" Lisa and I asked him simultaneously, at the same time that Alec sighed.

"Are all of my celebrity crushes Nazis?" Alec said.

"Yes," Lisa said.

"There are twenty of them Taylor!" Brian roared.

"Five," Alec sobbed, but Brian was still roaring.

"They won't sit around and wait for you to melt their balls off. They're going to redline us Taylor!"

"That doesn't sound too bad..." I said.

"Do you ever want to buy a house Taylor? Because you can't buy a house if they kill you and use your blood to paint a red line separating white neighbourhoods from black neighbourhoods."

"My power says that's not what that is..." Lisa said.

"But you weren't worried about the Empire before?" I asked Brian.

"Because they didn't want to kill me?" Brian said.

I looked at him and sort of made a nod of my head in the direction of Alec.

"Any more than usual!"

"Well that's a fucking problem then if there's a usual isn't it? When the status isn't quo we have a duty to make it quo. That's what being a villain means."

"No it isn't!" Brian said.

"And that's why I gave Coil the secret identity of every Nazi in Brockton Bay," Lisa said, examining her nails, which had been painted in alternating purple, white, and black.

"The whole of Empire Eighty Eight..." Brian said, stupefied to be repeating it all.

"No, every Nazi in Brockton Bay," Lisa said.

"Wait, not just the capes?" I asked.

"Everyone."

"What?" Brian exclamated. He pantamalised in and out, taking thunderous and onerous breaths that shook the fullness of his torso.

"Done a fucking brill job there Lise," I said, giving her a proud pat on the shoulder.

"Maaaaa," went Cashmere.

"Maaaa indeed," I said, nodding at the wise goat. It did not meet my eye, for it had managed to nibble off a sliver of gold and seemed to be sucking at it like one sucks at a nibbled off piece of rock candy one bought with one's name on it from Blackpool Beach.

"Come on Brian, they're used to hiding behind the pretence that they're ordinary parts of day to day american life. Now their names and faces are on national TV everyone is going to think that their presence in society is an alien and unnatural element of our society instead of one completely typical to the cult of nationalism that conservative governments in western societies encourage. They're probably cowering at home right now and packing their bags or something."

Lisa shook her head at me.

"Is that not what your power is saying?" I said.

Lisa shook her head at me and made a sad little look with her face. She pointed at the television.

"Empire Eighty Eight Retaliating!" proclaimed a newsreader, in front of a picture of a swastika painted in blood.

"I mean that's just usual for Brockton Bay..." I said.

Ah. The picture kept scrolling across, and apparently there were another seven in a row with that first one. That was worse than usual. That was eight times worse. Cashmere nibbled the gold bar a little bit more, somehow unmuting the television.

"We now go live to Dave at the scene of these hideous crimes," the newreader said.

"Thank you Dave," said a man on the scene, standing in front of the octople broken windmills. "What's remarkable about these apolitical gang signs is-"

He didn't get to finish. A shiny white light blew a hole in his chest in what would have been a horrifying sight anywhere else in the world, but this was America. A shinier and whiter light landed in the spot where the newsreader was standing.

"They stole her baby," Lisa said nonchalantly.

"Spoilers!" I said.

"I used to be a hero," the very shiny white light that I assumed was probably Purity due to the contextual clue of all the swastikas and blood. woman said.

I rolled my eyes.

"You took the most important thing in the world from me, Empire Eighty Eight has done its best to protect this city from excessive violence, and this is how you repay us? By stealing the future of our children and the security of the existence of our people? We will make the liberal monsters pay."

"They stole her baby," Lisa said. I tossed a gold brick at her and missed, but she ran off to fetch it because it was shiny.

"Until my baby is returned to me, the violence will not stop. We will make those responsible pay."

"Oh thank god," Brian sighed, relieved.

"Until the Undersiders pay, the violence will not stop. We will make the Undersiders pay."

"Oh no," Brian said, unrelieved.

"Oh Brian," I said, rolling my eyes.

"And to show I really mean business, I've brought my associates Night and Fog back from retirement."

A small grey cloud wearing a pair of rectangular glasses and a woman wearing a spiky black outfit with spiky high heels and a spiky cape stepped into the camera shot, standing to the right of Purity.

"Say hi for the camera honey," said the cloud that I assumed was probably Fog from the contextual clue that he was in fact, a cloud of a foglike substance, said. He was smoking a pipe and had a pair of glasses.

"Hi for the camera!" the spiky woman said.

The two of them laughed with the sound of the laugh track from M*A*S*H, smiling and waving at the camera. Night was standing right next to the half cooked meat that had been Dave. She looked down at him, and then back to the camera as she gently started to kick him out of the way.

"Who the fuck are these two?" I asked.

"Nazis," Alec said. "But like, double Nazis."

"Oh shit!" I said, looking at Alec. The TV made a sound like a kitchen sink garbage disposal, and Brian covered his eyes. "Are they dangerous?"

"Hella," Alec said.

Lisa looked up at me and stopped gnawing on the gold bar I'd thrown at her. She looked at me pleadingly.

"Go ahead."

"Faultline said they used to be members of Empire Eighty Eight years ago, before suddenly vanishing one day for some reason."

"And what does your power say?"

"My power says that they're double Nazis, and that nazi supervillains whose origin story is that they were in a death camp and were horribly experimented on and now they do Nazi things is more common than you'd think."

Alec frowned and let out a call of "That sounds problematic." Words that shook me to my core. Woe be that we ever had to hear them again.

"No worse than the prevalence of supervillains becoming evil because they're aneurotypical or queer," I said, uneasy.

"I feel you," Alec said.

"We're gonna die!" Brian yelped.

"My power says that there is a worrying trend for anyone who defiles societal norms to be portrayed as a villain," Lisa said, and she continued in that vein for some time but already my magnificent yet Worm-addled mind was back on the initial problem that I had was would have going to was have been worrying about. And that was double Nazis. I stroked my chin, worried. I was ready for Nazis, but double Nazis? My hummus might just prove to be my undoing after all. But worse than that was the news yet to come.

"Thanks for that, Dave," the newsreader said, as blue electricity flickered across his face. He started to smile smugly, the electricity settling into a lingering static field around his moustache. "In other news, now I am the last Dave standing. At last my dark purpose may be revealed. But first, who shall be the next Mayor of Brockton Bay? Our last mayor? Newly disgraced billionaire playboy Maxwell Anders? Or a man with a bucket on his head? Election season is coming closer and closer and we look at the issues that matter. All this and more after the break."


	63. Sieben.Sex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor and Brian have a talk, but snakes and Nazifurs interrupt them.

“So, about that ‘favour’ I just did you…” Brian began.

I glanced around his apartment, at all the benches strewn about the place. "Can we talk about it later? In private?"

He gave me a curious look.

"You're missing a wall Brian."

"That didn't matter last night."

"Well I wasn't discussing my feelings last night."

I knew I was making it worse by procrastinating, but procrastinating had gotten me through life so far and I'd have my chance to talk to Brian about what we'd been getting up to offscreen later. Whether I admitted my feelings or told him about what I'd been imagining with him and Alec, both felt too personal when Glory Girl could just fly past at any moment.

"Put a shirt on!" Glory Girl cried as she flew past the missing wall of Brian's apartment.

"Put some trousers on!" I yelled back.

"I wear shorts under the costume!" she yelled back, her voice fainter and harder to hear because she was further away now.

"Did not know that," Brian said, wandering off with a crop top in hand.

"I don't!" a glowing trail heading the same direction as Glory Girl yelled. I assumed from context that she meant the shorts. Speaking of glowing trails though, somewhere in the distance Purity floated above the docks. She was an oversized firefly against a blue grey backdrop of morning sky on a morning where the clouds meant you could only see clouds.

"Oh shit, Brian!" I called out. "You gotta see this!"

Beams of double helix light that presumably like, lit up with sig runes or fourteen letters and eighty eight words or the script of Gattaca or something, I couldn't make it out this far away without my glasses. You know these beams of light she was shooting, right? Well they toppled a crane and made the crane crash into a building. She spent a good minute leveling it, and then shooting the rubble. I watched a flying blonde and a glowing trail fly closer and closer to her, and then the big white light that was Purity zipped off in another direction.

"What did I miss?" Brian said, having apparently managed to get his muscled frame into his crop top after a good minute of struggling.

"Purity just blew up the last conveniently empty apartment block in Brockton Bay."

"Shit," Brian said, staring at the dust cloud the collapsing building had left.

"More like bullshit. How is that empty? Lisa told me her power said we having a housing crisis. Anyway, I need to ask you, does this mean that the Protectorate actually have to do something about her now?"

"Lisa said they already took her baby."

"But she's going to have to start blowing up inconveniently occupied apartment buildings?"

"But they already took her baby?" Brian said, shrugging. He had a point. Still, I frowned as I watched her start to fire some more lasers somewhere else.

"I thought her speech on the TV was hyperbole, but she's been going at this for a good day now."

"And its all because of Lisa," Brian said, looking dourly at a framed picture of a fox above his mantle.

"Because of Coil."

Brian pursed his lips.

I pursed my lips and crossed my elbows.

"Put a shirt on," Brian said.

"I'll do better than that."

"How?"

"I'll put my costume on, and singlehandedly defeat the entirety of Empire Eighty Eight."

Brian sighed.

"What?" I asked. He said nothing, so I said it again, and he still said nothing, so I said it again louder.

"I'm coming with you," Brian sighed.

*THIS SPACE RESERVED FOR A SINGLE WHITE SQUARE TO INDICATE THAT TIME HAS PASSED. AS THIS ARC IS ABOUT NAZIS, THIS SQUARE COULD ALSO BE REPLACED BY EIGHT EIGHTS. CAN YOU IMAGINE EIGHT EIGHTS? YEAH THAT'S EMPIRE 64, TRY AGAIN*

The interior of the vehicle that Coil had procured for us was filled with snakes. Everywhere. Draped across the back of seats. Inside the medicine cabinets. Operating a defibrillator in an attempt to resuscitate an unconscious snake.

"Does he have the power to control snakes too?" I wondered aloud. A shame that Lisa wasn't here to answer that for me.

Brian glowered at me from inside his motorcycle helmet. I could see him doing it because he had the visor up.

"Blockade coming up," the driver spoke. He didn't hiss it, but only because there weren't any esses in that sentence. He and the woman in the passenger seat were snakes, decked out in paramedic's uniforms.

It was, to all appearances, a real ambulance but full of snakes. I couldn't say whether it had originally been an ambulance from the snake dimension that Coil had stolen and modified so that it could hide more snakes inside it, or if he'd gone the other way and bought a van sized creature and hollowed it out so that snakes could drive it around. A shame that Rachel wasn't here to answer that for me.

"Hey, are we okay?" Grue asked me.

"For the last time yes!" I snapped back. God, was this what dating was like? Just that question every half hour for the rest of time?

"I get the feeling you're angry at me."

"I'm angry that you're missing a wall, that's not the same as being angry at you!"

"Oh," Grue flushed. He rubbed the back of his neck.

Suddenly, an impact rocked the ambulance. Luckily, we were both wearing our seatbelts. Still, it sounded like the ambulance had almost veered out of the driver's control, almost tipped, and then almost fell over, but had ultimately remained upright again. It kinda felt like that too.

I pulled off my seatbelt and stood up to look between the two front seats. I accidentally tread on a snake as I did so, but luckily for me I was wearing Spider-Silk(tm) hockey pads underneath my costume. Probably damaged the snake's teeth.

Out in the street, almost larger than a van, was a shape. It was gaunt and hollow, its limbs thinner than a motorcycle's exhaust and its chest with a clear gap where its guts would be. Mostly it moved around a lot. Lots of sharp pointy bits moving around. Its face was an animated version of the Witcher logo, but with spinning swastikas for eyes.

Walking on either side of it were two people. On the right was a tall man clad in a blue and white fursuit, the kind you only saw at cons. Except this was no wolf, this was a tiger. It was pretty high quality and would have looked cute and friendly except he'd worn black slacks and an armband atop it, the fascist see you next the events that happened that Thursday.

On the opposite side of the van sized creature was a twenty-something year old girl with an Icelandic pole vaulting champion's build and a blonde buzz cut that looked like she'd stuck her head in a bucket of day glo yellow paint. On anyone else it'd be metal, but she had red laces on her combat boots. She wore a metal cage over her mouth like that one dude from that thing where like he ate people and helped the government stop a serial killer that could have been stopped by easier access to affirmative care. From the look of the eyes behind her muzzle she was extremely uncomfortable to be there.

The big metal creature the size of a van shrunk until it was the size and shape of a man doing that pose that all Austrians make when you send them back in time. He wore a metal mask of a wolf that had hooks on it. Hookwolf. Rumor had it that like Stormtiger, Hookwolf had originally been a sane and rational human being who took part in an internet subculture as a means of experiencing the community and kinship that comes with a shared interest, but alass people refusing to take a stance against racism in the communities that he was a part of had allowed him to be recruited by toxic rhetoric disguised as free speech and legitimate concerns.

"Fuckshit!" Brian swore, from somewhere past my shoulder. He was right, fuckshit indeed, for the three nazis, of which at least two were nazifurs, that being a furry whose policies are that of a nazi or anyone who thought foxes looked cool in SS gear... they were all slowly walking towards us in a threatening manner that we would nonetheless be called unreasonable for reacting to were we to do anything about it. After all, walking slowly and threateningly while being a white supremacist wasn't a crime, was it? At least, not in Brockton Bay apparently. Cor, this town could be a right shithole some times.

I looked down at the floor beneath the driver's seat. The driver was coiled up there in hiding with the passenger, and I had a Tiresiaslike desire to thump the both of em for leaving us in the cold like this.

It looked like me n Brian were gonna ave to leg it.


	64. Sieben.GermanForSeven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor solves the issues that led to right wing politics infiltrating an internet subculture that normally embraces queerness forever by throwing Nazis into the ocean.

Grue thought quickly, and created a cloud of darkness through which we might be able to escape.

We slunk out the back of the van under cover of darkness, surely absolutely sure in our ability to escape.

There was a rush of air like a day so blustery that not even the combined forces of Winnie the Pooh and the third little pig could have withstood it, and I watched Brian's big black stinky cloud fly away down the street without us.

“Fancy this,” someone chuckled behind us.

"Not looking for a fight!" Brian said, which was unfortunate for him because I'd just said "You wanna go mate?"

"What?" that someone yelled.

"I said, do you wanna go, mate?"

"That's not what you said!" the someone barked. I assumed that barking meant he was probably Hookwolf. Everyone else with him would have sounded muffled or something.

"Was!" I said, starting to turn around.

"No, you asked me if I wanted to mate!"

I had been hoping to face them bravely and defiantly defiant and brave, but I quickly found myself covering my eyes.

"Put some fucking pants on!" I shrieked at Hookwolf. He was wearing as much as an Austrian did in a sauna that could travel through time.

"I'm a fucking changer!" Hookwolf barked.

"So steal Lung's magic trousers or something, nobody wants to see your Schwartzwald!"

There was a gruff and ugly chuckle from the left of Hookwolf.

"I'm the only one here who can talk!"

There was an angry buzz from the left of Hookwolf, followed by a growled "Fine."

I snuck a peak. The bottom half of Hookwolf was now sharp blades and metal. I wiped the sweat from my mask's brow. He was watching something past my shoulder. I glanced over it to see a blob of shadow heading away from me.

"Brian!" I frowned, saying. I know I was probably supposed to have run after him but I'd been a little distracted here and he had no excuse for not checking I was following him.

"Can you believe that man?"

"Ja," Stormtiger said, or probably shouted or whatever. Couldn't understand for the life of me why anyone would want to wear a mask like that. I turned back to face them for the third and possibly final time.

Hookwolf pointed his mask's shitty metal snout at me. "Where's the dog girl!" he barked.

"I dunno mate, I'm looking at a bitch right now inni?" I shot back.

He growled. Cricket beside him leaned to one side to spit, and then realised the folly of what she was doing before it was too late. She stopped herself, unhooked the back of her mask, lifted it off, and spat onto the street beside her. Then she slipped her mask back on. There! By her feet! Something was slithering. But I was staring at it, and I'd moved my head to look at it, and that was enough to catch Stormtiger's attention. Like me, Stormtiger's mask heavily restricted his field of vision. But worse than that, he could barely turn his head. The fascist had to rotate his whole body before he could see the snake that had escaped the ambulance. And that snake? It had a knife.

Stormtiger raised a paw and fired off a blast of air, blasting the knife from the snake's tail. The snake slithered away, but that was all the distraction I'd needed. I uncrept back into the ambulance, slinkly backwards fastly until I was in position to make my move.

"Where'd she go?" Hookwolf snarled.

"Ambulance?" Stormtiger suggested.

"She's just inside the ambulance?" Hookwolf asked.

"Yes," Cricket said. Her horse was voice. "My power means I can hear her inside."

"And my power means I can smell her!" Stormtiger said, his voice heavily muffled by his cumbersome costume.

"All I can ever smell is your sweat," Cricket hissed.

"Brockton Bay's winters are very warm!" I yelled. The nazis all made the affirmative and sympathetic noises of anyone who had had to sit around the house sweating in their underpants on Christmas day, but don't let this moment of humanisation fool you cause they're all monsters that believe that people are inferior than them and deserve to die. Just like capitalists, except the systems of oppression are sorta different.

Anyway, it was only natural that they had all saw me doing this, and that at some point Hookwolf clearly needed to recruit a karate expert slash eugenics enthusiast with a powerful sense of taste to his particular sub branch of Empire Eighty Eigh. I had already recognised that I said saw instead of seen, my power was that good, and I had also known that they had known that I was in the back of the smbulance. By the time they had slowly and threateningly walked to the back of the ambulance, I'd located the ingredient for the next part of my plan.

Hookwolf's satyrlike countenance rounded the side of the ambulance, and a shocked look crossed his face as he saw all of the snakes that I was sitting in. Hookwolf reflexively turned the rest of himself into metal, just like I'd planned. Because it was then that Cricket and Stormtiger rounded the corner too, and likewise were shook by the sight of the snakes, so they didn't quite react fast enough to the man sized neo nazi turning into a van sized sharp metal dog. The two of them were immediately hooked onto the sides of Hookwolf, turning my three separate enemies into a singular fascist cerberus of an enemy. Although I wasn't sure why this was a better tactic than just fighting them all at once...

God, maybe Hookwolf needed a tabletop wargamer with x ray vision too. Nobody with super eyes on his team.

Wait, super eyes! Of course! That's what I was going to do.

I focused my power on the very large and very heat conductive dog in front of me, and a small part of the triple threat monster started to melt. At which point it was drawn back into the middle of the metal dog, and then melted, and then rotated back towards the outside.

"Bork!" the knife dog said. Or really, it just churned a lot of knives around. But I chose to interpret it as the sound that dog on the bridge made.

"Ow, let me off!" Cricket and Stormtiger said in unison.

I'd been hoping that the heat would conduct through the metal dog fast enough to hurt Cricket and Stormtiger too, thus ridding me of all my foes in one fell swoop.

The large metal dog tapped a claw at me, clearly lacking patience.

Of course, conduction! I seized the defibrillator from the table where it had saved a snake's life but minutes ago. Then I thrust it into the mass of metal hooks and blades, sending an electric shock through hookwolf and... ah. Yeah. Into the other defib paddle. That was how current worked, yes.

A blast of air from Stormtiger's muzzle blew me and the Ambulance away from Hookwolf, earning a snarl and a snap from Hookwolf, and a cry of "Well let me down then!" from Stormtiger. Me? I was stuck in a big sad spinny spin as the Ambulance spun and flipped and flung snakes out onto the street. It wasn't until it slapped into the rubble of an apartment building that had been conveniently unoccupied when a nazi murderess had levelled it earlier today that I was able to stand up again, managing not to tread on anything this time. Mostly because I was standing back up on the ceiling of the van, and all of the snakes had managed to hold on tight and not fall.

Ok, heat plan and the defib didn't work. Can't punch him, cos he made of knives. Can't throw bricks, cos he made of knives. Wait, no, the defib plan failed because I was just shocking one knife. If I zapped Stormtiger and Cricket would it work? If I stretched my arms like, apart and put one paddle on each of them? Fucked if I knew, I wasn't an electrician. Or an ambulance driver for that matter. I certainly wasn't a snake.

The cerberus stalked towards me. Now was now or never was never. I threw each of the paddles at the precise angle to hit Stormtiger and Cricket in their faces, and the paddles slapped limply against their muzzles. Right, I needed to have charged this thing first. This is why these things are clearly labled half the time. Yangban and Poke Yolk and all that.

Stormtiger raised a handful of air, but like, it was like, a ball of air, so you could see it being all windy or something as he prepared it. He was being a lot more chatty than Cricket, but I assumed that was probably because he'd only had his costume impaled on spikes and he didn't really seem to be bleeding like she was. Her fault for standing next to a big old ball of knives I guess. Or like, my fault for luring her into that? I guessed.

"You're done for now!" Stormtiger said, shaking his anthropomorphic manifestation's head. That was when a big black cloud engulfed his head, Hookwolf's body, and just about everything else. Brian! I knew it were is power because I couldn't smell nuffin no more.

There was a blast of wind and the cloud dissipated. Then another black cloud engulfed them. I took the opportunity to step to the side, and seeing as a giant knife cerberus destroyed the ambulance a split second later I felt like I made the right decision on that one.

"Thanks Brian!" I yelled.

"I can't do this forever!" he yelled.

"Why not?" I yelled, as Brian engulfed them in darkness again.

"Gee, I didn't think of it like that!" Brian yelled from where he was lurking offscreen.

"They can't see smell or hear in there can they?" I yelled.

"No!" Brian yelled. "That's literally my power!"

"And you can just keep doing this?" I yelled slash asked.

"Until the cops show up and arrest us instead of them!" Brian yelled.

"Oh, shit, yeah!" I yelled he had a point. "He had a point. Um, let me talk to them then?"

The darkness around Hookwolf dissipated. The monster stopped flailing randomly and slowly, eventually, turned to face me.

"Bitch told me to tell you something!" I yelled.

There was a rumble of knife blades from Hookwolf.

"Nazifurs can fuck off!" I yelled.

"Don't divide our community!" Stormtiger yelles slash replied. I was seeing red now, like a bull in a china shop where they sold china that had been painted red, like Banner seeing the military industrial complex arrive to persecute him, like Josh at the temple when the money lenders told him he was hurting the community.

I dashed forwards, delivering a classic crouch punch into a standing kick into a rising uppercut into an air grab into a Super Move. Every touch was a stabbing pain of seizing knife blades, mostly because that was what I was having to do here.

"Two thousand yard yeet!" I yelled, lobbing the combined forces of Empire Eighty Eight's animal themed capes out into the bay, where hopefully they'd either drown or be shot down by anti air missiles or get incinerated when they hit the side of the forcefield.

"Taylor!" Brian yelled.

"Yes?" I yelled, not taking my eyes off of the rapidly vanishing metal shape.

"Good job!" Brian yelled.

"Looks like they're blasting off," I said. The shine of Hookwolf's metal caught the sun in the moment before a big building blocked off my view of him.

"What now?" Brian asked slash yelled.

"Now?" I yelled.

Brian walked up to me. Then he lifted his visor up, which didn't do much because there was smoke in the visor. Which was weird because I thought that stuff muffled and muted sounds. That's what I get for trying to remember anything I suppose.

"Yeah, now!" Brian yelled.

"We go straight for Purity, and then I poke out her eyes with a stick?" I suggested.


	65. Sieben.No

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor fights Double Nazis Night and Fog, a horrifying couple.

“You going to be okay?” I asked, as Brian zipped up his jacket. I winced. I hadn’t been looking forward to riding. It was too soon after our previous escapade, and I was still sore.

“I’m fine, Kiddo,” Brian spoke. Together we wandered back into the main room of the loft.

Alec and Rachel were still lingering about on the couch. Alec was draped across the back of it, Rachel flopped limply across the entire front of it. Tattletale was examining her phone.

"Finally," Alec drawled.

"Get in there," Rachel spoke into the cushions of the couch.

Tattletale spoke. "I thought we were in a hurry?"

"Well I could just seque us all to the docks?"

"Did she mean segue?" Alec said as we arrived at the docks.

"My power says no," Tattletale said, before turning around very suddenly and pointing into the sky. We all followed where she was pointing.

Purity, a flare of white against the backdrop of the gray sky, was surrounded by other figures, also all dressed in white, and also pristine looking, and also shooting lasers. I mean, it was impossible to mistake anyone up there when they all had the same powers and costume.

It was New Wave!

"What's their deal?" Rachel asked, scowling up at the buzzing WASPs.

Lisa noticeably perked up at the chance to talk some more. "The Leader of New Wave named herself Photon, but there was already a Photon so she had to name herself Lady Photon, and then the media started calling her Photon Mom because she's a woman so she might've been someone's mom even though she might not have been at the time. She's been unsuccessfully fighting crime in Brockton Bay for so long that her kids and her arch nemesis' kid had to start helping her too. Her and her sister and her kids and her sister's kids can all fly and all have forcefields, and her sister's husband can throw balls and her husband punches things good."

Being that it was New Wave vs Purity and some rocks and some ghosts, there was a lot of shiny lights and stuff in the sky and we all stood around and watched it for a little while.

"Were we gonna help?" Rachel asked.

"Yeah?" I said.

"Because I don't have any van sized creatures with me," she said. Damn. I knew I'd forgotten something. There was a reason I tried not to seque too much.

"Well call Rimmer then," Alec said, rolling his words and his eyes as he luxuriated about Brian. Three full luxuriates into a double backwards flounce. This man was as limber as Salmacis and thrice as clingy.

While Rachel got her phone out, Tattletale and I and Brian and me turned our attention to the matter at hand. Which was hard for Brian with Alec positioned as he was. We were about to come up with a truly amazing plan when a seven foot tall man dressed in yellow and white smashed into the wall near us.

"Manpower!" Lisa said. "He's a fairly durable guy. That's his power that is."

He got out of the wall and pointed at us.

"Villains!" he said.

"Yeah but we believe in antifascist action in our local community," said I I did.

"You're as bad as they are!" Manpower said, shaking his head at us dismissively. Thankfully a big chunk of concrete slammed into him out of nowhere and swatted that WASP. Bloody upper middle class.

I grabbed Lisa and Brian and by extension Alec. We were near enough a ladder, so I lept us all fifty feet over to the ladder so that I could climb us all up it.

We reached the roof just in time for my mask to get hit in the face by a chunk of cement. Had it been made of anything weaker than papier mache, I might well have died. Instead it just cracked the mask in half. I'd have to hope that noone noticed the difference.

"Look out!" Lisa said, late to the fucking party. Oh, wait, no, she was pointing at Crusader and Rune. Rune was a teen girl that was worried that she wouldn't be able to compete in sports class anymore if trans girls existed and were allowed to live their life without being harassed by hunks of concrete with sig runes on them. Crusader, by contrast, wore a spooky ghost costume that symbolised both his "proud heritage" and the way that nobody had to pretend he had legitimate concerns.

"She's got telekinesis over things she touches with decreasing control as the number of objects she is presently controlling increases and he makes stabby ghosts!" I said, looking to Lisa for reassurance that I'd gotten it right. She nodded at me sagely. Good.

The two of them were flailing around aiming stuff at New Wave in the sky, Crusader by ejaculating ghosts in the direction of them and Rune by sort of waving bricks in their general direction. This meant that they were not prepared for Brian throwing clouds of darkness at them. Rune flew out of the cloud, her fingers tightly clutching the edge of a manhole cover. A swipe from Alec's hand and she was not clutching the edge, but was in fact sliding off of the edge and plummeting to the ground.

"I'll squash you fuckers!" she yelled, before there was a crunch from her landing on something hard and concrete shaped some three stories down from where she'd been flying.

"Go back to the drafts, and take your Raven cosplay with you!" I yelled after her. Note to self. I was pretty good at banter.

"If she survives this do they have to kick her out of the Empire?" Alec ventured.

"Nah," Lisa said. "Othala has the power to make people able to heal themselves. My power says the second worst day of her life probably involved not being whole or something."

"But can't she make people throw fireballs too?" Brian asked.

"You can't?" I said.

Brian looked at me.

"I was joking," I said. It was at that moment that I got jabbed in the shoulder by a pike. I looked around at the ghost that had just jabbed me as I snapped the pike off. Then I grabbed the ghost by the throat, and tore its ghost hood off. Just as I thought. It had the face of American Conservatism.

"Oooooh! State's Rights!" the ghost moaned. I punched its unlights out, and looked up to Crusader. He was supported by ghosts in chains, and more ghosts shot forth from his loins to chase after New Wave's parade of flying white clad babes. Seemed he'd just gone and taken a potshot at me. Guessing he'd never seen a cape jump fifty feet vertically and horizontally after someone.

I lept 5000^-2 feet at 45 degrees to the horizon at him, screaming a fierce battlecry as I did. He started to dodge and I was about to miss him but stuck one hand out and managed to clothesline that sucker off his perch. That said, I was now a considerable distance away from the rest of my time. If I was three stories above ground and I lept 50 feet up and fifty feet across, how far away from the edge of the roof I lept off was I now?

I dusted myself off. Or tried too. Me and Crusader seemed to have landed in a big cloud of dust.

Wait, this wasn't dust, this was fog.

"Honey, a strange girl is inside me," the fog cloud around me said. I glanced this way and that, and my glasses found themselves staring into another pair of glasses suspended in the fog. They were looking straight at the spiky Double Nazi from the television. Night.

"Well just suffocate her then, that's what you always do dear."

"We've been through this honey, I don't suffocate anyone, I just partially solidify inside their lungs and doing so happens to cause internal bleeding."

"Silly me!" Night said, her voice chilling me to my core. I held my breath. If I'd taken a shocked breath, I'd have had a very pedantic cloud inside me.

"She's holding her breath dear," Night said.

"I can tell, honey."

The cloud condensed around me, going from the disparate wisps that presumably had only been disparate because a cape had fallen into them to a thick thick thick grey. It was like Brian's power, only grey instead of black. Also I could hear and smell things. In fact, it was nothing like Brian's power.

I lept fifty feet straight up that I might get a breath of fresh air. Instead, I got punched in the face by Glory Girl. Piss. Could've been an accident, but just as likely that she just saw that villain that totally defeated her that one time. I slammed back to the ground, temporarily dispersing Fog again. I took a desperate gasp, hoping that I hadn't quite got any of Fog in me. The sulfurous taste of egg in my mouth made me think different. Fuck. I hoped I was powerful enough for this.

"Honey," Fog said.

I took a deeper breath in. Deeper! I prepared myself to plunge, taking the deep and triumphant breath that plunging requires, and when I heard glasses clatter to the floor I knew that I had drawn enough of him in.

I lept fifty feet up, checked Glory Girl wasn't coming back to take another swing at me, and did that thing from the matrix where you stay still and the camera pans around you a lot. I used the brief period of weightlessness to spew Fog and a whole lot of blood up into the middle of a rather stiff Brockton Bray Spring breeze. The kind that makes our seagulls fly backwards and our portal squids stay on the ground with their tentacles swaying wildly. Hopefully he'd be out of the fight for a while.

I plunged back to the ground, landing slightly in front of Night. She looked at me somewhat agasp, somewhat unfased, and then at a point just behind me. Her eyes widened, and she pointed a trembling finger. Worried, and still wiping the blood from my lips, I turned to look where she was pointing.


	66. Sieben.Zahn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor discovers that she is invincible.

Oh yeah, Night's power. That's why something had just stabbed me in the back with claws like long knives.

"My power says she hates herself and was made to feel ashamed of her impurity and that because of that she's just like those things from Doctor Who," Lisa's voice echoed, in my memory of a conversation we'd had offscreen earlier. I'd been worried about the existence of Double Nazis and I remembered that I'd forgotten to ask what their powers were so I called Lisa on Lung's phone and she'd said that and then started going on about their origin stories again. Now if only I could remember what that thing from Doctor Who Lisa was on about was.

I looked down at the claws stabbing through my chest, and to my surprise they turned into a set of manicured nails. Which started to pull out of my chest, but that caused me to lose sight of them, but that made them turn back into claws so I saw them a little again, and all of that happened very very fast so I wouldn't have seen it if I wasn't half as powerful, but it wasn't half disorienting to watch it going back and forth like that until she was finally out of my body.

I teetered around a little, feeling a little light hearted. Possibly because she had just stabbed me through my heart like my name was Vlad and hers was Bram. Well bully for her. The Worm would sustain me, for my power was powerful indeed. I span about, catching the corner of her cape in my eye. I heard a laugh that turned into burbling as she vanished from my sight again. Behind me! I unspan about to hit her with my mega unspin punch, and her body went flying into a brick wall, kicking up a little smoke. My breath heaved with the expended effort of the mega unspin punch.

I turned my back on her, striking a triumphant victory pose and letting loose a weighty huff.

Night chittered behind me. I turned, and she tut tut tutted at me as she climbed out of the Night shaped imprint in the wall that she'd been in. My pierced heart skipped a beat. I blinked.

In the span of a blink wet meat seized my exposed neck, my exposed wrists, and my exposed ankles, coiling around it and then uncoiling fast enough to deglove me.

I let loose a screech that belonged to someone else. That wasn't a noise that I could make anymore. That was the kind of pain that belonged in a locker. I held up my hands to my face. There was glove, there was meat, and then there was the end of my sleeves.

A hefty blow tossed me to the ground, and when I arrived there I found myself staring up at Night. There wasn't a scratch on her. Her costume had plenty of tears, but her hair was still in the same blonde ponytail and big poof above the top of her mask.

"Hi!" she said.

"Hi!" I said, doing my best to stare at her. My powers thankfully included enhanced eyes not drying out.

She smiled a fake smile, her eyes not following the rest of her expression. They were cold, soulless eyes. Not like a doll's eyes. Like a gecko's eyes. "Could you close your eyes for me sweetie? It'll make it so much easier for me to kill you."

"And if I don't?" I asked, staring up at the Double Nazi who'd thrown me to the ground in revenge for all the rubber points on her costume that I'd bent.

"Well then sweetie, I'll have to kick you again and again until you curl up into the foetal position and can't see me anymore."

At that I blinked, and blinking was apparently enough for to get another cut in. This one was to my stomach. When I opened my eyes again she had a foot raised and ready to stomp. I rolled out of the way, getting another stab through my back for my trouble. I tried to roll, but I was skewered to the ground. I risked a look back, and there she was again. Smiling.

I shifted back a little

"Help!" I yelped. I kept my hands out of the way, kept my eyes on her. She smiled that horrible smile down at me, as creepy as pasta made by King Lycaon, with meatballs from Titus Androgynous and sauce from Lucius the Eternal.

She lifted her leg, readying a stomp. My left eye was staring straight at the point of her heel. Wait! My eyes! I used my explosion vision on her shoe, and the thing popped in a blinding burst of metal and leather.

Something cold and moist pressed itself against my eyes. I reached my hands up to try and peel it off but I soon wished that I hadn't. Hooks and spikes went through my gloves. It was like grabbing a monomolecular cactus. I screamed for help again, the sound muffled beneath my mask.

Another stab into my chest, and then a violent squirming as something squamous rooted around inside me. My lungs, my spleen. One after the other was being stabbed. It'd be fine. It'd all be fine as long as the Worm was intact. One of the others would come here and-  
She  
grabbed  
the  
Worm  
IJJFFFTGGHHAHTHHH!HH!HH!!H!HH!HH  
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EGGIIRIRLLLKKKILLL!!!!  
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The nightmare flickers before my eyes ended, and with my great and terrible staring emerald spheres I saw for a brief and horrible moment the Worm that was my power in Night's gloved hand, a smatter of my locker juice drizzled across the entire scene like barbecue sauce down the chin of anyone who had eaten oven cooked ribs. White and shining light framed Night's black body as I watched the Worm slither from her hand and back into my chest. Those staring and passionless eyes didn't even look at it. They were too busy trying to check Night's reflection in my pupils.

"Disgusting," Purity said. Her glowing form slid from out behind Night. "There, your precious brute is unharmed."

"Is she though?" I heard Lisa say.

"No," I tried to say, but words wouldn't leave my lips just yet. Only a sad gurgle.

"Yes! Now give me my daughter back!" Purity screamed, her hands forming the complex and animesque gesture required to lob screaming laser based death at us.

"Wait, you thought that was us?" I asked, quietly and wetly.

"Yes!" Purity yelled at us.

"That was child protective services!" Lisa yelled.

"Really?" Purity yelled. It was at that moment that Alec waved his hand, and Purity toppled head over heels midair. Her loop dee loop saw her slap her bright and shining racially pure face into the pavement.

Alec winced, letting out a solitary "Oof." as Purity briefly flickered off and on like a lightbulb about to die, and then stopped shining.

"Did we kill her?" Brian asked.

"I could throw a brick at her head to make sure?" Alec ventured.

"Poke her eyes out with a stick," I mouthed.

"Ahem," Night said, coughing into her locker juice soaked glove.

"Or not," Alec ventured.

"My power says she isn't getting up anytime soon," Lisa said. I twisted about in the mess that I was in, looking to her friendly face as she ignored me looking at her and instead had a fish around in her utility belt for something and then holding it up to her eyes. "And my binoculars say she looks like she just hit her head pretty bad."

"Ahem," Night said.

"Oh shit, right, my power says you still wanna kill us."

"Yes," Night said.

"Well what if you didn't?"

"Hmm," hummed Night from somewhere behind me.

"What if you went and got Kayden's daughter back for her?"

"Hmm," hummed Night from somewhere behind me.

"She'd be really impressed with you then, and then she'd have to show you..." Lisa paused mid speech, Claudiuslike, or else the way someone reading from a teleprompter might do if they reached the end of one of the lines on the teleprompter. "How much bacon she can eat?" Lisa said. She shrugged.

Then she turned around, and then Alec and Brian, who were also standing with Lisa at this point in time, I wasn't sure I'd gotten that across yet but they were, they also turned around, and there was a wooshing noise and a horrible squelch behind me and when I turned around Night and Purity were gone, with only a Purity shaped snow angel in the puddle made of me as a sign that they had ever been there at all.

"Are you okay Taylor?" Brian asked.

"Yeah, I'm invincible," I said.

"You were screaming an awful lot," Brian said, concerned.

"She's fine," Lisa said.

"Ok then," Brian said, sounding no less concerned.

"Thanks for saving me," I gurgled, lurching to my feet. I took a moment to compose myself, a sentence that some music student somewhere has probably made a joke about and gotten a real hoot out of. There. Safe and sound. Worm inside me, where it belonged. Cor, I musta looked like a trashy version of Aegis right about now.

"Aegis is already trash," Lisa said. "And it was Alec's idea."

"I thought we could use you to throw bricks at Purity's head," Alec said, taking a moment to examine his gloves. "But then I heard you screaming so I figured that we'd need to come rescue you first."

"Get in there!" I said, going to punch Alec's shoulder. Alass, my fist was blocked by Grue's hand, which was already congratulatorily atop Alec with the force of a suave and soft affection entirely unlike the Canto 25 force with which Alec expressed affection. And bemusement. Any feeling at all really. Grue gave me the smug look of someone who had beated someone to the punch, and I could only frown back at him. I swooned lamentably in a crude imitation of Alec. Woe was me, that my love's heart belonged to another.

"He's poly Taylor. Brian's poly and Alec's French..." Lisa said, pausing. Her eyes darted from right to left.

"French Canadian!" Alec interjected, a hand touched to his heart in horror.

"Canadian," Lisa said.


	67. LINOLEUM AISLES THAT I LOVE TO GET LOST IN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor confronts Coil about how his evil schemes have hurt an innocent girl. Named Taylor.

The skeleton of a building loomed over us menacingly, daring us to recant our approach of it. One day it had been one of Brockton Bay's high rises, twenty stories tall, but now it sat in Brockton Bay's Apartment Complex Graveyard. No less threatening and no less daunting in its stalwart refusal to permit the restarting of our econimal than the boat graveyard, just less wet. There was no sea here, just bulldozers and piledrivers and mixers and Trainwreck grazing peacefully at the concrete with his fellow construction vehicles.

"They say the ghosts of capes what couldn't swim haunt this place," Brian said, glancing this way and that. "That they drowned not in the rust soaked bay, but in cement."

Lisa fished the skeleton key out of her utility pouches and put it to the skull shaped lock. She held it open as Alec, Brian, Rachel, me, and Cashmere all sashayed and mingled through the wrought iron gates. Then Lisa shut the gates behind us, and with an ominous click the gates were locked.

Beneath our feet crunched stray twigs and flowers left out in memory of the brittle and petrified faces that dotted the pavement. My eyes were peeled for any sign of the words Wet Cement. Tattletale led us to a hatch, proudly bearing the logo of Fortress Construction. That is to say, it had a castle in the vein of Disney or Citadel.

Tattletale glanced at it, then away to a teen sized statue reaching out of the pavement, mouth frozen in mid scream. Her hand slipped into the statue's mouth and procured a second key, this one with a handle in the shape of a toilet bowl. A little more fiddling, inserting the key into the window of the tower of the Fortress Construction logo, and the hatch was unlocked. Beneath it was a ladder that led down into the darkness.

For a story and a half we slunk down, until at last we reached a room where we could faintly see a glimmer of light at the end of a long corridor. Along the corridor we crept, past skeletons and rats, all the way to a single torch hanging from the face of the wall that marked a dead end. I reached over and tried to lift it up, but that triggered some sort of strange mechanism that saw the wall half rotate, granting us sight of a wonderous room full of neon lights and metal walkways and guns with laser pointers attached pointed at us all.

"Oh hey Circus!" Alec called. Sure enough there they were stood in front of one of the gun wielding soldiers of Coil's. The soldier was sweating from the position he was in in the corner of the room. One of Circus's clown shoes was flat against the wall right next to the soldier's head, pinning him in place as they loomed over him.

"They're the shapeshifter, right?" Brian whispered to me.

"No," Lisa whispered to me. I repeated as much to Brian.

We found Coil a few minutes later, standing atop a walkway atop a black and empty pit that seemed to lead down into black nothingness. Lightbulbs swayed and swung in a nonexistant breeze from the chains that they hung from from up above in the distance ceiling lost to the inky black darkness what like. Coil, visible only from the horrible empty white light cast by these impermanent bulbs, was busy talking to four identical suit clad people with the red faces and white moustaches of Republicans.

"You can harumph all you like, you'll have it for tomorrow or I'll have you thrown into the pit of Despair and Used Mattresses to languish with that Noelle girl."

"Harumph!" the identical suits said, shuffling rudely past us. They seemed glad for our interruption.

"Undersiders!" Coil said, throwing his arms wide. He'd opted for a black costume with a white snake and a purple lilly today.

"Coil!" I said, slightly ahead of the other Undersiders.

"More or less," Brian said.

"I don't know what you're insinuating by that," Coil said.

"He means he thinks that you're a body double," Lisa said, jabbing a thumb at Brian as she looked to Coil.

"No I'm not," Coil said, very indignantly.

"He means he's a body double," Lisa said, jabbing a thumb at Coil as she looked to me.

Coil angled his odd mask at us.

Lisa shook her head at him. "We can't keep doing this without a payrise Coil."

"Hmmm," Coil said. "Considering I can end your entire universe in an instant, what are the odds you accept not getting a payrise?"

"48.35 percent," a girl's voice said.

"We almost lost Taylor fighting the Empire!" Brian said.

"Everyone makes mistakes Grue," Coil said, wagging a finger. "Anyone can fuck up an email. But very few people make a mistake that gets their entire universe destroyed."

"Fuckshit!" Lisa exclaimed.

"Fuck you!" Coil roared, raising a middle finger to Lisa. "I get paid to play Coil all day so some asshole analyst can climb a corporate ladder, how do you think I feel spending all day with the blob and a human calculator? I think having to fight some Nazis once in a while is much easier, especially with how he normally treats thinkers. Now I think some apologies are in order."

"So he isn't the real Coil?" I said.

"No," Lisa said.

"Good," I said. Like Darth Vader before me I seized him by his waist and heaved him over the edge of the safety railing. He got out a good Kaiser scream before he landed with a soft and squelching sound. I turned off from the Pit to face the direction that that that that that that that that girl's voice had come from earlier.

"Chances the universe gets destroyed over this?"

"13.37%," the girl's voice said.

"What the fuck was that?" Brian said, above the hearty growl of two bitches laughing.

"I like those odds," said I, a smile still on my maskless face.

There was a clapping from the same end of the bridge as the girl's voice. Three Coils stepped forwards, one in black and white sarcastically clapping and two in white and black holding the wrists and shoulders of a twelve or so year old girl.

"I always hated him," the Coil at the front said. "But I'd appreciate it if you didn't waste any more of today's questions."

"Can I have candy now?" the girl said.

"Well I forgot to bring some. I'm not infallible," the foremost Coil said.

"Chances the universe ends if I chuck this loser into the Pit of Despair and Used Mattresses too?" I asked.

"13.37%."

"Stop it!" Coil shouted.

"I almost fucking died fighting Nazis that are twice as Nazi as the average Nazi today and your boss doesn't even care!" I shouted over him. The Coil went rigid, and I shifted to a softer voice. "He just wants to be amused. And it looks like me killing you losers one by one is funny!"

There was a heavy gurgling noise from below us in the Pit of Despair and Used Mattresses, followed by the sound of two screams. The Coils all shuddered, doing their best not to look down into the pit.

"See! Even the Pit monster is laughing!" I spat, gesticulating wildly at them with an ungloved hand that still bore the marks of the ungloving it had received from Night. "I already knew about your secret weapon and her Mirai Nikki, and anything I don't know I can just ask Tattletale to fill me in on offscreen."

"Can I have candy?" the girl asked. I reached into my pocket to find a tube of rowntree's fruit pastilles and lobbed it at her noggin, scoring a hit right on her bonce. Naff on.

"Chances we all go home and laugh off tonight as a fun little adventure in setting boundaries?" I asked, watching an American puzzle over the bizarre architecture of a rowntree's tube.

"Nought point one percent, but that one reality was a statistical anomaly where all of you hit your head on the way out of this facility and fell unconscious for the rest of the night and woke up not knowing anything that had happened," the girl said, managing to open the foil at one end and free a blackcurrant flavoured sweet.

I stared at her. That wasn't right. One, that she'd gotten a purple one on her first go instead of a shitty green one, and two because what the fuck just happened to the probabilities?

"Tattletale?" I asked.

"Yeah?" she said.

"Do you know why the numberses would change like that?"

"You changed your question," she said.

"I changed my phrasing, it was the same sort of question."

"It probably means something is going to happen tonight that isn't likely to make Coil end the universe, but has a 13.37% chance that it might," Lisa said.

The weakly glowing white lights that illuminated the walkway shifted to a blood red, and I glanced at the Coils to see if they had any clues. They were staring at the lights in horror, and without another word they carried Dinah Alcott off with them.

"What was that?" Rachel said.

"My power says that red lights mean warning," Lisa said.

"Any of that!" Rachel snarled.

"Kiddo wanted to show that she wasn't afraid of Coil, Coil didn't care that we killed a body double, and Coil is holding an upper middle class girl hostage to use her as a magic eight ball after kidnapping her in broad daylight on the same day that we robbed that bank. Her power lets her predict the future by seeing all possible outcomes and then sorta telling you how many ones she saw of that sample that align with the outcome you asked her about. If you pick her up and shake her though she just gives you generalisations that can apply to any question you asked and you might as well have used a tarot deck without training. Also Coil has fed her exclusively on candy and now she cannot survive without it."

"What does any of that mean for us?" Rachel barked.

"I understood some of that," Alec said, a little late, just to prove that he was still here and still listening.

The screams from below in the Pit intensified, doubling again to a barbershop quartet of agony. They were accompanied by a roaring and a wailing as if from some unfortunate soul bound to a body they had long wished they could escape. A bit of a mood really.

Brian looked over the edge into the empty black at the bottom of the Pit, and lifted the visor of his costume to yell "Lets get out of here and figure this all out when we don't have to listen to whatever that thing is."

"My power says it is some fake gamer girl who feeds as jungle," Lisa said, as though she had no idea what any of those words meant.


	68. 7.12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A dire warning is sounded. Something wicked this way comes.

The lot of us walked and talked as we made our way out of the construction site slash graveyard of lost potential.

"We're not to blame for what Coil did to Dinah, are we?" Grue asked, his voice as deep and sad and echoey as Earth Bet's version of Daffy Duck. Funny right? Yeah joke's on you, we've got the same version as you lot.

"Nah," I said. "He'd've'ved done it anyway if we weren't here."

"But we helped!" Grue said.

"You know, when I was a kid..." Alec began, but stopped when I started to heat up my hate vision in his general direction. I looked away from him, calming myself down a little.

"I understand," Grue said, sounding like he understood without agreeing with whatever unspoken point Alec had been about to make using anecdotal evidence of his atrociously evil upbringing.

"Her uncle's the mayor too," Lisa said.

"What an odd coincidence," I said. "Is he gonna run for it again?"

"He can't be!" Rachel said, incredulous. "Lord Buckethead would slaughter him."

"I never took you for one interested in local politics, bitch," Alec said idly, flounced atop the concrete corpse of some teen in a cape.

"A cute girl wearing a collar told me," Rachel said. Butch indeed. Butch continued, with a call of "She said that Brockton Bay's parliamentary election is based on a system of electoral colleges, then a parliamentary vote, and then debates that turn into fights to the death between the candidates."

"That sounds like it unfairly favours people like my father," Regent drawled, drumming his fingers atop his cane.

"Already did," I quipped, to no laughter.

"If it bothers you that much, just kill Lord Buckethead first!" Rachel barked.

"So Mayor Christner can vote against getting the zombie boats out of the bay again? No thanks."

"So you can be Mayor?" Rachel said.

"Hey Rachel," I roared. "Issat a dagger I see pointed towards you?"

"No," she said. I got a chorus of looks from the Undersiders. Fine then. Perfectly fine. No complaints ere.

"I got it," Lisa said.

"With your power?" I asked. She looked at her feet in shame. Swat I thought that.

"It's not fair," Brian said somberly.

"Yeah but electoral politics never is," I said somberly.

"Not that," Brian said sombraly.

"Not electoral politics?" Alec said sombreroly.

"What happened to Dinah?" Lisa said summarily.

"Yeah," Brian said somberly. "Made me think of my sister."

"You have a sister?" the tall and limber French-Canadian said incredulously.

"Exactly," Brian said simply.

"Well unless she's a cape you're fine," Lisa said sglibly.

"Anyway, what was that alarm business in Coil's base about?" I asked, separately and unrelated to the conversation at hand.

"My power said that alarm was for if an SS class threat was coming," Lisa said. She froze, her face lighting up in alarm.

We all stopped walking. In front of us crowds of citizens were running every which way like lambs before Lycaon. A storm of drums pounded through the tannoys that hovered atop every other lamppost. I nodded my head along with it briefly. Cor, was that Judas Priest?

Lisa nodded her head solemnly.

"That's pretty banging," I said, smiling. I hadn't heard this song in ages. I looked to Lisa. There was no trace of her vulpine grin in the expression on her face. She slowly and somberly shook her domino mask wearing head in my direction.

"What?" I said.

I looked to Brian. Alec was stood next to him, holding his hand lightly.

"Fuckshit!" Rachel barked, shaking a fist at the heavens. "I still don't have my creatures with me!"

"What?" I said.

"The lights in Coil's base? The noise on the public announcement syste? It's the Painkiller," Lisa said.

"Fuckshit indeed," I said.

"There's more than four of us," Alec said somberly.

"Yep," I said. I looked from one of my comrades to another. Alec, Lisa, Brian, Rachel. Statistically, one of them was going to turn into a scythe tonight.


	69. Interlude 7 - The Woman with the Gun to the Head of Existence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miss Militia's Interlude is brought to you by a special guest appearance with designs on becoming a recurring character.

*One hour, one minute, and three seconds.*

  
<Walk!> the soldier barked in Turkish. Unlike the soldier's dog I guess? The dog barked in greek. I don't know. Look, we're so close to the real action. The good stuff. We've been working up to this for ages. You know it. You all know it. Two years of coffee and cake and even our protagonist knows how this one is supposed to go down. But she doesn't know how it will go down, just how it should. And you don't know how either. And me? I know how it will. That's the plan after all.

I'm the narrator and this is just the prologue. And I swear to shake it up.

But for now, I suppose we'll get back to Miss Militia's... Actually, its a rather horrible origin story, all things considered. Darn it. I'm not really sure I'm that comfortable joking about it. I think I might actually have brushed up against one of the few unicornlike filters on my actions. I mean, I'm not really joking about it given how everything here in this fic is already pretty topsy turvy, but reporting on it? Honestly, its all the bad joke versions of people you know of. Saying you know them would be a bit much and all I've ever done is heard of them contextually or read of them. But there's all the ways that their lives are more of a joke joke than some cosmic joke. Take Miss Stillons for instance, last seen in the presence of a rather more colourful than usual Crawler. She happens to have a funny little cloud above her head in addition to the accidental murder of her family. Her visage is a dead ringer for nothing like who she's supposed to have been. This world's a little too early to have even promised her a future beyond dying in a basement. Anyway, digressed a little bit there, sorry for that but that's how it is with me. Or this me at least. A lot of me going around, not really anyone worth your time. Anyway...

"One foot in front of the other," Hana told herself. At five am. Without a trace of coffee. Her feet were like lead weights as she trudged forward. The needles on the trees and shrubbery scraped against her skin. I suppose this is where the Merchants got some of the plants they introduced to Brockton Bay.

She hurried to take another step forward and flinched as a Twig broke underfoot. The smallest of whimpers escaped through her lips. She stood terribly, terribly still.

<Twig!> a soldier barked in Turkish.

<Twig!> the other children yelled.

It was at that moment, terrified of a Twig, that Hana was gifted her magic stick. And lo did she use it to kill all of the bad guys, and save all of her fellow orphan children from the evil revolutionary wyvern, and you know I'm not really feeling it today. Sorry. Got all worked up. Mind is stuck on other things. I could probably use another coffee. Ah! Thanks Nag. That's good.

Ahhhh.

Hmmmm.

Phew.

Cappuccino with kirsch and no sugar.

Don't suppose someone else wants to do today? We can't let Taylor have these back. Nag? Fair. No, you can still do yours later if you want, I just need a break. Ashley? Sleeping. Ok. Daphne? Daphne? Ok, thanks. Are you sure you're ok? Sure? Ok. Ok. I'm gonna go hang with Nellie for a bit if you need me.

Oh, right. Um, well, you just sort of have to... describe it? Most of the words will come naturally and as long as we stick to what's happening, a little editorial nudge can slip in with the rest of the weirdness. No, I know you know I'm just... Ok. Thanks for the coffee, going to go hang with Nellie.

We begin our scene in the cold and empty bedroom of the noctis cape. It was undecorated, unlived in, all but unslept in. Hannah's eyes snapped open. She'd just had the most amazing dream. A vivid and colourful recollection of a time she saw the face of an angel, with all of the wheels and eyes and wings she hoped for. Which was odd, because normally she didn't sleep. She was, like anyone whose trigger involved coffee, a Noctis cape, which meant that she did not normally sleep unless they could be bothered to. A Noctisn't cape, by contrast, was anyone who had been taking a nap at the time of their trigger event, and subsequently slept all the time.

A long time ago now, she had saved all of the kids from the evil wyvern and his cake loving statue, and was then shipped off to the magical kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It was a wondrous place where an adopted child was expected to save Christmas once a year and the best people could hope for from the the average politician was that they didn't want to reinstate Section 28. Thankfully, as is the way of things, she was rescued by an American who whisked her away to a less magical land where it was normal for a girl of her age to shoot at unarmed criminals. They dressed her in red white and blue, and got her to change the way her name was spelt, and got her to convert to Protestantism, which was all exactly what the British would have done.

The woman with the gun had slept with her gun, which I have been told is normal in America. She changed her gun into a pistol with an accompanying comfortable holster, which I presume isn't normal in America. She twirled it about her finger as she brushed her teeth, sparing a glance for the stern bald eagle statuette that server her as a towel rack. She holstered her gun and saluted it, the white foam of used toothpaste dribbling down her bandanaless chin. Once she'd rinsed her mouth clean of the disgusting mint flavoured slime the Protectorate issued the brave men and women they had been fine with congress laboriously legislating into a corner, she holstered her pistol once more, put her bandana on, holstered her submachine gun, closed the door to the bathroom, and shouldered her rifle.

Even if she was unable to dream, America had a surreal and dreamlike quality to it. She was of course speaking about the difference between cultures Like how people said like like, or cried when they were in emotional turmoil, or complained about how much of their wellbeing was dependent on health insurance companies. What a bunch of whiners, she would think, whenever someone would lament to her the conditions that had driven them to a life of crime.

It was so hard to believe that her first adventure had been twenty six years ago. By contrast, that time she'd seen the face of a dying angel was pretty easy to believe. It was comforting for her to believe that dying angels had given her, an exceptionally annoying girl, and America's premiere serial killer superpowers within the same year.

She smiled as she marched up the stairs towards the common room of the edifice to government spending that she and her allies called an HQ, knife in hand.

"Beep!" her ostensibly robotic colleague beeped loudly.

The most experienced cape in Brockton Bay frowned, and stepped out of the common room and through the open door of the only one of her colleagues to sleep less frequently than her. His room was occupied by more racks than a particularly overbooked domme's dungeon, and stocked with enough halberds to arm the entire Protectorate if he could ever be persuaded to share his toys. Within that room was the collected carbon copies of expense reports for an entire lifetime of trying to get blades sharper than they already were.

"Did you work too hard and forget to go to sleep again, Armsmaster?"

"Beep," her workaholic coworker muttered.

"Cor, yore up early," a cockney voice from a computer said.

The gun toting government enforcer glanced at her mostly mechanical compatriot's webcam, smiling beneath her ever present bandana with enough force to crinkle the eyes of a lesser woman, a less patriotic woman. The CGI dragon on Armsmaster's screen smiled back, baring the smallest portion of her snaggledy fangs.

"Dragon!" the green multitool user said.

"Miss Militia!" the green scaly lizard on the screen said.

"Beep," the halberd afficionado said somberly.

"What's the matter?" the american flag clad woman said. The sad robot hung his head in his arms with the heavy and despair inducing noise of an unoiled bicycle's lurch.

"He got demoted," the mythical beast themed cape said, dropping her accent for a moment.

The soldier winced.

"He'll be moving to Chicago," she continued.

The survivor winced harder. "I'm so, so sorry," the gun nut said. If she could have cried, she would have. Her friend didn't deserve this treatment.

"Beep," the machine spoke, slumping even further. "Bloop bop bee dop."

"But he's insane!" the patriot ejaculated. "He thinks he's a wizard, he thinks capes are magic instead of gifts from god, and he thinks that there was clear queer subtext between Dumbledore and Snape!"

"Beeep," he said, but it was clear in the curtness and the hardness of his tone that he wasn't.

It was at this time that his incredibly advanced 1980*1080 resolution computer screen, powered by the most advanced computer technology 2011 had to offer, began to flash red. Threatening noises like those given off when you try to click something on a program that isn't responding rung out from the computer's hyper advanced surround sound speakers, and the keyboard and mouse glowed with the same red.

"Uwu?" the woman in the machine said.

"Beep," the machine of a man said, shifting upright. The Atlasian weight upon his shoulder pistons had been lifted as his visor energetically scanned the giant red popup on his screen, and his coworker read it along with him.

"HS203 has encountered an unknown error?" the new Protectorate leader said incredulously, before she continued to inanely relate to us any and all information she was being made privy to. "Would you like to report an SS class threat? Slayer concert in town? Neo Nazis? Double Nazis? A combination of increasingly dramatic factors that have breached the drama threshold and summoned the Painkiller to unleash her ancient evil?"

Yes, that time had come. It seemed that a program made by the knight and his scaly friend had found a correllation between disparate elements, each innocuous on their own but collectively spelling the doom of the town that one of them lived in and the other one didn't care about outside of the presence of a man who liked her and knew how to code. Armsmaster reached over and broke the glass that people were meant to break in case of emergencies. Immediately, very metal music started to play through the emergency sirens. That is to say, the sort of metal that people's dads might listen to. Dads, and robots who spend too long in their rooms talking with dragons that thought they were cute.

The machine man with a machine mind and a machine heart shot Hannah a look. A concerning, concerning look from a machine determined not to go to Chicago.

The woman who follows orders swallowed her concerns. They were as nauseating at those bits of cornflakes that are stuck in your teeth all morning.

It is here that we end our interlude. Next chapter we begin the Endbringer arc, where Taylor will face her greatest foe to date, the Triumvirate will unite to save Brockton Bay, and an unexpected face will appear where it had no right to. Can an alt!Taylor hope to survive it? Listen up, strap in, notify your next of kin, make yourself a nice cup of coffee, and find out.

Today's chapter was narrated by Daphne Stillons.


	70. 8.1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The heroes get ready for a big crossover event

8.1

The crush of bodies was a tide that the Undersiders and I had to push through, like cattle at a cattle gate, the virtuous unbaptised before King Midas, or moshers at a mosh pit. There was at least a thousand scared people in our immediate area. Even our costumes didn't give people reason to give us space, nor the ominous and menacing cloud that Brian exuded. Thoughtless in their panic, the crowd was guided only by policemen and police cars that had been established at intersections so they could hold up little arrow signs that said "Safety This Way" and pointed away from THE DOCKS and other little arrow signs that said "CROSSOVER EVENT THIS WAY!" and pointed towards THE DOCKS. The former had a helpful illustration of a family cowering in a bunker, the latter a drawing of someone in a cape punching a giant squid.

Everybody had been informed, in the pamphlets that the government distributed every so often, about, the emergency procedures. Run to the shelters, duck and cover, and wait for the all clear siren. All roads were closed to cars within city limits, but if you just so happened to be caught in traffic outside of town you could just take the next intersection and relax.

The closer we got to THE DOCKS the thinner the crowd got, until eventually all that was left was like, some indie capes you've never heard of heading our direction, and like, a few gorn and guro fans that figured the chance of getting turned into a scythe was wurf it getting to see a really cool superhero fight.

"That's better," Alec sighed, performing a quick cartwheel in the empty street. Someone in a Judas Priest shirt gave him a funny look, and I gave the metalhead a penetrating glare until he turned away from us. And speaking of Judas Priest, that song was still bloody going. I know it was the official warning siren, but they could have made it loop a bit better than just starting it from scratch after about a second and a half of silence. It was like being in line at Alton Towers or something.

"It's her song," Lisa said.

"Yeah I know that," I said. I was gonna say something else but I realised I'd still not got a mask on. I needed to get a new one or some welding goggles or something but I didn't exactly have three months.

"Eyewear is paramount," Lisa said. She'd ditched her domino mask in favour of a rubber fox mask she'd seen in a store some people had been looting. Alec had wanted to stop to hit the cash register but she'd insisted on donning the ugly wobbly thing.

"Well I like it," Lisa said, in unison with Alec.

"Jinx!" they said, also in unison. Neither dared to say another word.

"Does your power give us any clues about her?" I asked Lisa, expecting an answer and receiving a shrug.

I looked at her, and she shrugged harder, as if to say her power didn't tell her everything. "But my power doesn't tell me everything?" Lisa said. "Thinkier thinkers than me have thunk hard and the consensus is that as the global population of parahumans rises the normal distribution of powers to interesting individuals alongside the standard distribution of powers' power means that every so often we get another Nilbog or Sleeper. And since nobody can tell who is going to get powers that powerful, we have no way of stopping Endbringers from happening other than creating a comprehensive wellfare state that ensures the comfortable life and personal liberty of all people, whilst generally trying to encourage people to be nice to other people."

Rachel laughed raughcously, and I deigned to join her. Alec did not, presumably because he was Canadian and every American knew they were a socialist utopia. But still, America was rather fucked in this regard. England had gotten pretty fucked, getting one coal powered Endbringer and one glass one. Russia had unleashed the Sleeper on us all.

"Apparently Africa has one that explodes," Lisa said, finishing my thoughts' three beat. I was about to ask her something else but there was a giant roar of jet engines as a giant zord looking mech with four legs and two wings and eight rather large missiles landed atop a rather nondescript building with a couple capes loitering outside and having a fag.

With a sound like a thunderclap, six capes zapped into the parking lot. Alexandria stood at the head of the crowd that had just arrived. Her head turned from side to side as she strutted her way across the parking lot. She was everything that you thought of when you thought of the word heroine, in the sense that she was tall and tough and had the most common superpower. And I wasn't talking about andflight. Her costume was a tight black bodysuit replete with a cape and visor that made her look like the Phantom of the Paradise.

After Alexandria and her posse fabulously stalked across to the building, some rando cape in a green costume cut across the parking lot, standing in the wrong space at the wrong time when a teleporter arrived. The two overlapped, screamed, flailed, and then disappeared with a sound unlike a thunderclap.

"Do you reckon this is it?" I joked. Nobody laughed. This was a Crossover Event, not a convention. Even if we had all come in costume, and even if they did sell commemorative shirts after the fight was over. I lined up with the other Undersiders in a way that made us all look pretty badass, and we Stardust Crusaded our way into the nondescript lobby of the nondescript building. Using the appropriate sidewalk and without cutting corners.

It was full of Wards, Protectorate Capes, French Canadian Capes, the Travellers, Nazis... Wait, shit, Hookwolf was still alive. He was literally glaring daggers at me along with a bandaged up Cricket and an ordinary looking shirtless man who was staring at me with an even more unbridled rage than Hookwolf. Oh shit, and that was Eidolon. Nowadays Who Would Win contests ran rampant in the streets, the Protectorate helpless to stop them, and normally they spoke of utter nonsense like Legend somehow being able to beat an invincible woman, or Brockton Bay's Wards somehow being able to win any fight, but whenever someone legitimately asked who the strongest cape was, they'd usually say "Sleeper." But when they asked who the second strongest cape was, it was Scion. And then it was the Endbringers like Painkiller that necessitated Crossover Events, and then it was probably Eidolon cos he cheated and picked three powers that let him play control or just combo you out. Cor, everyone was here. Eidolon, those people that bashed bible bashers with bibles, that doll girl that did birthday parties and so-so costume design work that Regent kept bitching about whenever you gave him a chance. As I looked around the room, Sundancer glanced at me, noted my presence, then she seemed to go out of her way to avoid looking at me again after I waved at her. What a bitch. I watched as more doomed capes entered the room. Narwhal, the seven foot nude woman with a horn and rainbow coloured scales, caught my attention for a long enough period of time that even Rachel told me to knock it off, but I mean, it was Narwhal. Narwhal. She had her head bowed in 😤, her well fit body resting against a wall near the front of the room. Moving on from her, we had more protectorate capes, and... holy shit was that Bastion? God I hoped that twat got killed today. He looking like he was yelling something at Kaiser but I couldn't hear it over the sound of Rachel still being on Phone with her dogs, god damn it! How long does it take you to say goodbye to someone you're going to see in five minutes Rachel? The bitch growled at me. More and more and more arrived, and more were moring when Arrive and Legend armsmastered away from their conversation and turned up to the front of the room. Casual conversation continued unimpeded, and it took Legend tapping a microphone a few times to get people to pay attention and pipe down a little.

Legend cleared his throat. He had the kind of voice that could carry a mid 2000s youtube channel. "We'd like to give a special shoutout to to Dragon and Armsmaster for warning us ahead of time. Usually we show up after most people are already dead. Thankfully this means we can plan things out a little bit. With a little bit of elbow grease and luck, only one in four of you will be turned into a weapon by Genoscythe the Not Safe for Work."

There was a roar of thunder outside that surely signalled a bolt of lightning splitting the blood drenched skies. And, mind, that was what happened when you censored her name.

"Cor that's a bit of a downer innit," the projected graphic of a cartoon dragon looming on the wall behind Legend said.


	71. 8.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor must prepare to face her most dangerous threat yet with the arrival of Endbringer Genoscythe.

"This is serious Dragon!" Legend proclaimed. "I'm telling them this because they deserve to know, and we so rarely get the chance to tell people new to these events. I'm trying to convey a message of hope in dire circumstances!"

The cartoon dragon scrunched her green snout up.

"I have seen too many good heroes die because they let their guard down!" Legend proclaimed, before he paused and glanced out the window. I followed his gaze. Storm clouds, A lotta storm clouds. A few drops of red hit the window pane, dripping slowly down in streaks.

"And now its raining blood!" Legend yelled, exhausted. Dragon stopped making a face.

"Does anyone else want to tell me...." Legend began, and a field of people raised their hands. "How to do my job?" Legend asked. He refused to pick any of the volunteers from the crowd, and resumed his dramatic speech from where he'd left off. "We think of Painkiller as an awkward middle child, acting out for attention. Though she lacks the impossible durability of Armourface or the sheer power of the Sleeper, the Painkiller is just as dangerous. Hers is a striker power that allows her to immediately and painfully sculpt the flesh of those she touches into speed and strength enhancing weapons and armour, so you'd better make sure your costume covers your skin Narwhal."

Narwhal gave Legend a look of 😏 , raising her eyes slightly from her powerful slouch.

"Remember that her armour is made from people, and will scream in pain as you attack it. She is fast, and tough, and her scythe that can cut through most forms of armour..."

He carried on, and I just sorta tuned it out while he was just dropping names and dates and numbers about her powers on the quantitative scale the PRT adopted from what they could gleam from the mad and multifarious whispers of the Who Would Win Contests, and more stuff about stuff this one bad bitch blew up. Legend was really dedicated to ignoring any questions from the audience at this time.

"She is here to fight, and if we fight long enough she will get bored and go home to her palace of bones beneath the sea. If we fight fast enough she will get tired and go home to her palace of bones underneath the sea. But this means that we can't let our guard down. The usual tactic is to fight her one at a time in ascending order from weakest to strongest, this ensures that she can't spend time focusing on turning someone into a piece of her armour if she's waiting for me or Eidolon to heroically intervene."

"And don't think about just fuckin off for an early night cos if she don't get a fight in she's just gonna go around breakin stuff an we can't ave that now can we?" Dragon's screen projected animated avatar said. "Make a right mess of fings. Sall ready gonna take weeks to clean all the blood off uv everyfink innit."

"And remember that she's too powerful to kill for some reason!" Legend cut back in, holding onto the podium. "We only call them an Endbringer if they're that strong."

"If you think you got any cheeky ideas just tell me and we'll give it a go," Dragon said. "Armsmaster ere's got a knife what cuts through anyfink and he reckons he's gonna stab her in the eye with it."

"Yes well, Alexandria intends to fight her one on one to start with, she thinks she's studied her moves well enough that she can predict them if the fight isn't complicated by one hundred different capes shooting different coloured lightning in everyone's line of sight," Legend said, straightening up his posture. "You are doing a great thing!" Legend declared, raising his hands to clap the audience.

"Was that it?" I yelled. Legend did not answer, even as others in the crowd joined in. I could see why they didn't bother with this normally if that was all they were gonna do.

"An if you wanna hear the names of everyone what dies I got an armband I made that tells you that," Dragon said, nodding her head.

"Beep," Armsmaster said.

"Yeah, what e said," Dragon said. You know, she was the best tinker in the whole world she was. And in that moment I couldn't tell you how nice it was to have a hero like her, someone with an accent like mine. I mean, yes, not the best of circumstances, but it was just nice to have someone like her to look up to.

Clockblocker slid up next to me and passed an interesting looking armband to me. I looked him in the eye and he broke the eye contact. Right! I was still covered in all the locker goo from that scuffle with Night earlier today. I slid the armband on over my skinless wrist and held it back out for Clockblocker to adjust, but he'd just moved on to hand one to Lisa. Brian and Alec both declined to take one.

Taking a final glare at Legend, "If anyone has any questions, feel free to stick around, but otherwise please leave the building once you have your armband, and proceed to the beach in an orderly fashion."

As one, we Undersiders set out to join the absolutely huge assembly of capes queueing to get out of the nondescript building like mugs what stuck around for the end of the match from Twickenham. Which wasn't helped by Rachel trying to get herself a t shirt!

"The line is going to be worse after the fight!" Rachel snarled.

"No, everyone is going to be dead or injured after the fight!" I snarled.

"I am buying this shirt! Its my money!"

"Fine! Miss the fight!"

"I don't care about the fight, I'm only here because you're here and you're going to get yourself killed!" Rachel spat.

"Am not," I said, arms folded. Hookwolf tried to give me a brief shove as he walked past, but I stood still and he hurt himself more than he hurt me. Cos I'm well hard.

"Have they got any crop tops?" Alec asked.

"I'm looking!" Rachel hissed.

By the time we'd gotten to the beach, all the good spots were taken and we could barely see a thing. Rachel was unbearably pleased in her "I fought Genoscythe the ******** and all I got was this lousy T Shirt" shirt. Not even the bone scythe that took the place of the T could redeem that shitty shirt.

"Well I think its cool," Rachel said.

Well I didn't. Anyway, this was a fight to the death, so nobody stopped me and the Undersiders from shoving our way to the front. After a good minute and a half of politely slipping past past independent heroes, pushing past protectorate heroes, and stepping on the toes of fascist assholes, we were standing on the sand and had a nice view of the chariot of bones led by a dozen chained skeleton sharks made from the tibias of orphaned billionaires as it parallel parked on Brockton Bay's shore.

"Genoscythe," Legend whispered, and a blot of lightning almost zapped her chariot but not quite, so it just made her look cool. Thunder rumbled and crackled, and a chorus of drums took to serenading her as Genosycthe the uncomfortably fond of eyes did a backflip out of her chariot, and landed with a splash of red at the blood stained ocean's edge.

The skies opened up, a torrent of blood pouring down upon us all. There was a sound like the creaking of iron gates as she drew herself to her full height. Ten feet tall, clad in armour made out of the practical effects that weren't used in that remake of The Thing if they were shaped into something from a mid 2000s MMORPG. Her square rimmed glasses were made from the salt of five gold five players. Her cape was a set of curtains that I'd once seen going for half price in Asda.

She raised her scythe of bone high. Edge, that was the sycthe's name. It was made from the first hero to tell her she needed to stop and calm down a little. Armed with Edge she had killed a truly dank amount of heroes.

I assumed a dramatic pose. Alec flounced atop me, hands in a magical looking gesture. Grue grued. Glory Girl plunged into the sand in front of us, completely ruining our view of the scary woman dressed entirely in the still screaming skulls of her victims, and not to be outdone Alexandria plunged into the sand in front of Glory Girl.

"We are Genoscythe!" Genoscythe howled, grim reaperlike as she pointed a finger towards us all. Her curly black hair was drenched by the rain, and blood streaked down her glasses like cranberry juice. "And we're here to make you team up to fight a real monster and stuff!"


	72. Interlude Seven and a Half

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A peak behind the curtain as villains Jack and Daphne destabilise the universe of DADA with the help of music, coffee, and the power of fanfic.

"This is serious Dragon!" Legend proclaimed on the line of the post on the page on the tab on my tablet. I took the last sip of today's third coffee and set it back down, poking the power button as I did so.  
  
It was time! It was finally time! I clasped my silver hands together with a manic glee. Interlude Seven and a Half.  
  
Daphne span the handle on a coffee grinder that had been welded to the outside of our glorious machine. She was ignoring me, continuing to fiddle and faddle with the controls, and so I got a little bit closer.  
  
I was about to say something when she pushed a button on her tablet, which was wirelessly connected to some sort of jukebox as I understood things. Wonderful what technology can do these days, isn't it? Especially her technology. She's no tinker but apparently the barista gig had been a way to save up money for a degree in temporal mechanics and quantum engineering. All way beyond me, but as I understand it connecting a boiler to a grinder, a blender, a jukebox, the metal organs of at least thirteen mannequins, and a freezer is enough to get a rather pleasant Paradox Machine up and running. At least while it parasitically feeds off of whatever baristanomics normally flies flies this coffee shop from one universe to the next. Again, this is my understanding of things, I'm just some guy.  
  
Daphne held a silver finger to my nonexistent lips. Right. She was working. Monologue for later. Introductions for now?  
  
I am Jack. I've been in a work of fiction and a few fanfictions but I try not to talk about those. Bit of an old shame, awful lot of textual nasties. Skeletons in my closet. Well, ones that aren't literal skeletons in the closet from all the people that I've killed, since one of the very few concrete facts about me is that I am a serial killing mass murderer. Didn't really have any formal training, just sort of fell into it. Anyway, I died, and this me came back inside a coffee shop inside a pocket dimension outside of the known universe.  
  
Together, with the help of a genius inventor slash barista, I have concocted a genius plan to save everyone, and then kill them over and over and over. To this end, my associate Daphne has built a machine capable of coagulating reality while I narrated interludes for a fanfiction with a decreasing following. In a few moments, all that will stand in our way is the United States Government, a secret society of unstoppable badasses that want to kill our alien lord and saviour before he can stop the heat death of the universe, and a woman from Canada pretending to be a cockney robot.  
  
With us we have an assortment of hand picked friendly faces who you'll get to meet in another arc or two but right now you just need to know that there are five of us and we're all people you've met before from different alternate universes. There are a lot of universes!  
  
"Paradox Machine now at 99.9%," Daphne reported. The room stank with the smell of boiling vanilla and coconut milk, filled as it was with a thick and heady vapour hissing from the pressure vents on the machine. Readers, I want you to finish reading this sentence and then take a moment to close your eyes and imagine that rich and decadent smell. Imagine smelling that smell forever, accompanied by the ceaseless grinding of coffee beans against sharp metal teeth.  
  
Now normally we can read the majority of these universes but not interact with them, so we used to abduct the odd guest. We sort of did that for a while to stay sane, since normally people only show up here as a sort of eternal punishment for their sins. I used to kill people for fun, Crawler and Nag are trans, and Daphne once spat in a man's cup of coffee. Yeah, I don't get it myself. It mostly seems like Christian hell and purgatory are conceptual punishments levelled against anyone that dares to upset the status quo.  
  
"Initiating Rogue Traders!" Daphne barked. I clasped my hands together with delight in preparation for Australian pop punk..  
  
Baby baby baby...  
  
  
Most guests forget their entire conversation with us as soon as they leave. But the barriers to outside canon posed by logic and reason are considerably weaker in this daft world than anywhere else. Why, our guest here even remembers the years she spent outside of the time flow of her own universe. She's also a little lazy. Didn't want to go back to begin with. She doesn't like interludes either, gave up on doing those and so with her narrative voice absent someone had to take over and that someone was me, a charismatic psychopath with a great voice for radio.  
  
Now, with the help of improvised paradox engine, we can force our way in permanently at a significant enough station of canon. Once we're in the paradox engine destabilises the normal narrative flow to a sufficient degree that we can, while still working seemingly within the confines of the base plotline, take over the known universe. Again, this is as I understand it, I've had to ask Daphne three or four times and she's just kept telling me to watch more Doctor Who.  
  
Having paced about the room a bit too far, I turned around and faced the glorious machine just in time to watch the dial go from 99.99 to 100. Then 101. One hundred and two. I let out a little worried noise.  
  
"Keep your little worried noises to yourself, it'll all be fine," Daphne said, waving me off. She wiped the brown coffee grind muck off of her silver hands. "100 just guarantees that the one death we were already promised happens. We need at least 110 before the lizard shows up."  
  
Sorry, before the what?  
  
"It fits the narrative better this way," Daphne reassured me, the angle of her faceless head seeming to give the impression of a smug and self assured smile. Nag's hand slid out of the counter beside her, passing a mugful of coffee to Daphne's waiting hand. I furrowed my nonexistent brow, hopefully hoping that doing so would request a little bit more context from my fearless team leader on this one because this wasn't part of any plan I'd been told of.  
  
Daphne took a sip from her EVIL GENIUS mug.  
  
"Oh come on Jack, everyone knows an Alt Taylor dies as soon as it hits Leviathan."


	73. 8.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crossover event is off to a good start as the collected capes engage Genoscythe, only for them to be interrupted by an even more terrible monster.

Slayer's Raining Blood was in full swing as we as a crowd collectively drew back. Alexandria had first dibs here. She was durable enough that she couldn't be cut by Genoscythe's scythe, but that wouldn't save her if she got touched. The two circled about each other like wrestlers or fencers, both waiting for the first sign of weakness.

Genoscythe moved fast. Fast enough that it was only my powerful powers that allowed me to catch her movement

It was intense enough that I didn't notice the shape in the ocean of blood behind them. It wasn't until Legend made a rather loud confused noise that I even looked, tearing my intense and chaste gaze from the two powerful women locked in mortal combat.

In the red of the bay something lazily swam around Genosycthe's chariot, and approached the shore. Something big and green popped its head out and then quietly stepped up and out of the water out.

"COR, WHAT'S THAT OVER THERE?" Dragon's mechsuit roared.

The crowd's attention shifted from Genoscythe and Alexandria's intense footwork to a big green lizard with a tail, awkwardly stumbling about on the land and adjusting its balance, hands out to the sides like a child pretending to be an aeroplane.

She must have caught a glimpse of green in the reflection of Alexandria's helmet, because with her incredibly perfect inhumanly precise reflexes Genoscythe span and drove Edge into the lizard's gut. Edge stopped about halfway. The lizard looked at her with four unflinchingly unblinkingly lidless eyes, and slowly reached out to grab Genoscythe by the neck. Genosycthe tugged Edge out and swung it again, and again, and each time the Scythe's point-seven-five-of-a-molecule thin edge stopped mere inches into this forty foot monster's skin.

The lizard's Lennylike hands touched Genoscythe's face, and I braced myself for the discomforting body horror that came with Genoscythe's power. I closed my eyes, and opened them when I heard a cheer off to my right somewhere.

Genosycthe abandoned Edge, instead seizing the lizard's hand. For a moment I dared to hope that she was going to turn the lizard into a sword that she'd kill like, two babies with and then throw away. Nothing happened. The lizard held Genoscythe by her face for a moment, before slamming her head into the sand and burying her like an ostritch.

Another cheer, this time from Dragon's suit. "YEH!"

I wish I could have been that optimistic. Because I think I knew what this was, and I knew that this wasn't supposed to happen. Not here. Something was wrong. They weren't looking at the right picture. Because when Genoscythe had arrived she'd been standing in blood, but now that sand was dry. I looked past the lizard, and the tide of blood was receding farther and farther, far enough that if I wanted I could have walked all the way to the Oil Rig playset with Force Field and Helicopter.

The lizard made no sound. How could it, with no mouth with which to speak? I forgot to mention that by the way, the lizard had like, no mouth or hair. It would have looked weird if it had a wig. It was just... plain. Not even a real lizard, a real lizard would have scales, or bumps, or something. Just a featureless green. A child could have drawn it with a crayon.

It let go, and Genoscythe struggled her way out of the sand, and the world's second or third most dreaded cape spat sand out of her mouth. Fourth if you counted dead capes, fifth with the birdcage counted, easily 14th if you lived in the American Midwest and statistically it was more likely that the Slaughterhouse 9 would show up and use you for another innovative and en guarde installation art piece on the nature of human suffering in a post colonial age. Watching Genoscythe pick herself out of the sand, it dawned on me just how big this thing was. Genosycthe was ten feet tall in bonewrought heels, and this thing was bigger than three of her would have been if we had two more Genosycthes and we could persuade them all to stand on each other's heads instead of doing unpleasant things.

"Fuck you!" Genosycthe proclaimed, raising a middle finger to the lizard. And the lizard responded by calmly walking over to her, an awkward and wobbling walk of something that was never meant to trod on dry ground, and when she tried to karate kick its head off with a triple backflip for flourish, Genosycthe fell to her feet. She was picked up in both the lizard's swollen plasticinelike hands and crushed like a can, her armour of bones snapping and crinkling because it was made out of a brittle material. The lizard tossed her onto the beach with the rest of the litter.

"Hooray?" a fat hero, one I registered as Chubster, said. A crowd of heroes joined in, half clapping, and Chubster waddled towards the lizard, hand extended in friendship and congratulation. The lizard reached out with one hand as it waddled towards him, and like Cassandra at Troy, like the president in Mars Attacks, I shook my head for I knew what was surely about to happen. Chubster had reached out to him like the president in Monsters vs Aliens, and the lizard picked him up in one hand, turned around, and tossed him at the Oil Rig. The gathered heroes and villains watched in horror as Chubster's body soared across the sky only to be burned against the Oil Rig's force field like Icarus and the sun, that dude that Apollo let drive his chariot that one time and the sun, or a bug against an ancient Greek bug zapper.

We could all see it now. Taller than the Oil Rig. There was a wave on the horizon, not of blood but of water.

"Strider, get us out of here!" Legend belted. It didn't matter. The end was here.


	74. Interlude 7 and a Half (BONUS)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tossed between the cruel forces that hold power over her life, Tattletale comes to a revelation as to the true nature of the cosmos and her frightful position therein.

"Oi Tash!"  
  
"Ye Dot?"  
  
"Some homeless girl's nicking clothes again."  
  
Tasha frowned as she looked up from her cell phone's screen, and to where Dot was pointing. Some rando girl no older than fifteen what had ratty blonde hair with ugly blue tips what was dressed in clothes stolen from out a goodwill bin was looking at an unpleasant and unfashionable jacket. People like that weren't supposed to be able to walk around the Boardwalk. Urgh. Urgh. How repugnant. You know, its kind of hard to insult someone without agreeing with some asshole's talking points, and regardless of my feelings on the subject of that Tattletale girl I certainly hate elitists more.  
  
"I'll handle it," Tasha told Dot.  
  
She cleared her class traitor throat, straightened her back, and approached the girl with the smile of one who worked in retail. "Can I help you?"  
  
"No," the girl said firmly, placing the jacket back in the wrong spot. Tasha's eyes went wide.  
  
"That's a four thousand dollar jacket," Tasha said.  
  
"Fuck off!" the girl said incredulously, in unison with me readers because I can get behind a giant storm stirring lizard but a four thousand dollar jacket is taking the mick. Is that really how much those things cost?  
  
Tasha glanced at the other customers. A pair of college aged girls, a woman and her boyfriend, and their pet Oxford Comma, all of whom immediately started checking the price tags on the clothes they were looking at and wincing. Yes, even the dog.  
  
Leaning close, Tasha hissed, "Do I need to call security, you little idiot?"  
  
Security in this case meaning a bunch of murderous private police officers that regularly beat up gangsters, shoplifters, and homeless people.  
  
The girl leaned in closer, and in much the same tone as Tasha she hissed "He doesn't love you." Her breath smelled of used sweet chilli sauce and locker juice, and as Tasha tried to retreat from her the girl placed a hand on her shouder, pulling her even closer. "I hate being called stupid, and I love giving people information. So while normally I'd slap your face off, and everyone here could watch, today I'm feeling nice so I'm going to save your life beyotch. If you go home right now, right this second, your boyfriend is never going to speak to you again. But if you work late and pretend I never told you this, the two of you are going to still be sleeping together whenever he remembers you exist."  
  
Tasha whimpered at the smell of the girl's halitosis. The girl gave her a pat on the back, grinned, and then let go of Tasha, slinking back over to the clothes rack.  
  
"Four thousand dollars?" the girl said, a little loudly, still incredibly incredulous. She took it back off the rack, gave it a quick look over, and then slipped it on over her rat eaten hoodie, checked the fit, smiled, and slid right on out the front door, never mind the alarm.  
  
Consider my mind changed. Someone needs to get this girl a knife cos she's going on the list.  
  
SCENE CHANGE!  
  
They arrived on the rooftop in a crackle of thunder. She almost lost her footing, but Brian was holding her feet steady for her.  
  
"What the fuck is this thing's problem?" Alec spoke. His normally white shirt clung to him, painted pink by Genoscythe's moodier and more dramatic rain and now slowly being washed by the new surge of storm. The wind picked up, sending his dampened hair right in front of his mask's eyes. He made a half hearted attempt to blow it out of his sight, a butterfly flap against a butterfly flap some months ago.  
  
"He's down there," Brian spoke.  
  
"I said what, not where," Alec spat, wiping the hair from his mask in time to catch sight of the flying umbrella that caught him in the face.  
  
 _Wowsers, like a hurricane out here._ Lisa's power helpfully chimed in. She looked down to where Brian was pointing. There on the dried out beach the Lizard was waddling towards the oncoming tidal wave. Beyond it a dozen heroes with ice powers were hard at work turning a tidal wave into a tidal wave with added icebergs.  
  
 _Well he's probably a he I think,_ Lisa's power offered.  
 _And between the rain and the water he's probably a mass hydrokinetic I reckon._  
  
"He's a mass hydrokinetic!" Lisa said, over the howl of the wind.  
  
"I said what's his problem?" Alec spat. He maid an annoyed flick of his hand in the direction of the giant lizard, and then another. "And how come my powers don't work on him?"  
  
 _He's too powerful for that._  
  
"He's too powerful for master powers!" Lisa said, and then remembered her armband. She took the thing out and pressed a button on it before repeating herself for everyone else. Her voice rang from Alec and Brian's arms, and across the rooftop as the rest of the capes deposited here were filled in.  
  
Alec let out a mournful groan. "So do I just go home then?" Alec asked.  
  
"Probably," Tattletale said, grinning in the face of the storm as she made to turn her full attention to the Endbringer from beneath the waves.  
  
 _What's he looking at?_ her power asked. She obliged her power, turning her head to follow the Endbringer's gaze out towards the Protectorate headquarters. In spite of all the efforts of the heroes to stymy its flow the tidal wave had reached it, and the flickering forcefield bubble was now being carried in on the wave like a giant inflatable beachball.  
  
SCENE CHANGE!  
  
With all of the terrifying menace and half the swagger of Toby Macquire Lisa emerged from the obscenely overpriced clothes store, the fanciest of Brockton Bay's homeless since Mush was in the bin behind a jeweller's when they tossed out all the used blood diamonds from last season.  
  
She had enough time to snarl at one fellow shopper before the enforcer arrived.  
  
 _That's not an enforcer, you can tell cos he's got his walkie talkie on the wrong side._  
  
"You're not an enforcer!" Lisa informed the man who was not an enforcer.  
  
"Oh yes I am!" the man whose face Lisa had once seen in the player's handbook for Dungeons and Dragons under "Bugbear" intoned.  
  
 _Oh, yeah, ok, he's not an enforcer, but he does enforce things for other people._  
  
So he's working for a gang or something? Lisa thought, trying to reframe from saying that allowed.  
  
 _Probably._  
  
"Piss," Lisa said. The enforcer but not that type of enforcer seized her by the back of her four thousand dollar jacket and bore her aloft towards the end of the boardwalk. Not the watery end mind, but the end where people walk on and off of the boardwalk.  
  
There, waiting for Lisa, was a limousine.  
  
 _Well it isn't your parents, so at least there's that._  
  
"Boss wants to see you," her brutish captor said, in the moment before Lisa raised her arms and slid out of her four thousand dollar jacket.  
  
The door of the limousine clicked open, but Lisa was already a quarter of the way down the boardwalk.  
  
"Wait!" the enforcer of a sort burbled. "Wait or the universe will end!"  
  
 _Fuck me, he ain't kidding._  
  
SCENE CHANGE!  
  
The Protectorate Headquarters rolled over a frozen crest of the tidal wave and into the boardwalk the kind of sickening crunch and an impact that only thousands of tons of iron crashing into the earth could deliver.  
  
When Lisa turned back, the lizard was gone, and the beach was overrun by water and ice. Across the city, buildings lit up as capes took to the air.  
  
"Go home Alec," Lisa said.  
  
"I happen to live in our secret base in THE DOCKS," Alec said through his drenched mop of hair.  
  
 _At least he's not in one of those underground bunkers,_ Lisa's power offered her. It was a nudge in the wrong direction for her to be thinking about. Those things had been built for superfiends wearing skeletons and singing angels, not flood waters.  
  
Their armbands sounded a staticky noise, and then the mockney accent of Dragon squawked out "Oi anyone know where that scaly bugger's gone?"  
  
"I think I see it," a man's voice offered. A moment later, the armband rang out with the same man's voice. "Carapacitator" the man's voice said, before a robotic sounding woman added "down, CD-5."  
  
An Englishman said "Krieg" and then the woman continued "down, CD5."  
  
Strapping Lad down, CD5.  
  
Humble down, CD6.  
  
Night down, CD7.  
  
Night down, CD7.  
  
Night down, CD7.  
  
"That should keep him for a while," Alec said, earning a slightly relieved smirk from Lisa.  
  
Intrepid down, CD8. Lisa could hear a crash above the waves and the water and the wind and the dozen other distractions. CD8?  
  
 _Well they couldn't use street names, half the capes here are from out of town._  
  
But still, where the hell was CD8? Lisa checked her armband's map. She needn't've. There was a horrible lurching noise on the other end of the rooftop that confirmed her suspicions for her.  
  
She span about in time to watch the lizard haul itself over the other edge of the rooftop. It towered above them all, taller than the building that they were all hiding on. In one terrible swipe of its hand it dashed two of her fellow thinkers and a brute with a flaming axe who was two sizes too small for a fight with a giant lizard into ribbons.  
  
 _You're right, that brute was wearing orange and red, probably just was fire resistant and a little stronger than usual or something._  
  
SCENE CHANGE!  
  
"I simply must apologise for the manner of our meeting," the seven foot man crammed in the back of the limousine spoke. He'd had to contort himself in order to fit, looming spiderlike about the entire vehicle. His whole body was wrapped in-  
  
 _A skintight suit made from that metamaterial harvested from a giant fungal growth from space what was hiding in a glacier in Canada. Papers mentioned that the other day cos the glaciers were melting._  
  
In that. Urgh. What an annoying power. Anyway, Rhizome apparently. Lisa wouldn't know but that stuff isn't supposed to be from round here. Lot of stuff like that going round. Coffeeshops, lizards. Allsorts.  
  
"It's okay..." Lisa said. The man's skintight suit creaked as he turned his head from his glass of wine to her. She swore that the glass was emptier than before.  
  
 _It is._  
  
"I hope my soldier was not too rough on you, Sarah Livsey."  
  
"Lisa," Lisa said, with the annoyed smile of someone who happened to have a name they were rather fond of.  
  
"Don't tell me I abducted the wrong thinker..."  
  
 _He's joshing, he knows that's your name._  
  
"The name is new."  
  
"Rather lame for a cape name," Coil said.  
  
 _Says Coil._  
  
"Says Coil," Lisa said, injecting a good humour into her words that she really wasn't feeling in the back of a car with a man who seemed too tall and too thin to be human.  
  
"I have been watching you some times, Sarah. I have become aware that you are, in fact, a useful commodity and I would like to buy you."  
  
"Are the child locks on?" Lisa asked, watching the spider man lurk.  
  
 _Nah._  
  
She made for the door.  
  
"Fine, your universe...."  
  
Lisa let go of the door handle.  
  
 _He's not gonna give up on that one is he?_  
  
SCENE CHANGE!  
  
What remained of the brute's broken body was flung off into the swirling night sky. The lizard's mismatched eyes had never even glanced his way. They were too busy staring at Lisa.  
  
Brian stepped forwards from her side, ready to throw a cloud of darkness at the lizard. The lizard, in response, surged the length of the rooftop in a single tackle. There was a crunch behind Lisa's back, and when Lisa turned to look at where the lizard was now standing there was no Brian to be seen, and all that was standing between Lisa and the lizard was Alec.  
  
Alec looked from Lisa to the lizard, and then back to Lisa. He shrugged, and then promptly did a swan dive into the flood waters rushing through the streets below.  
  
"Regent!" Lisa yelled after him, incredulous. Too late. She was utterly alone now.  
  
 _The narrator is watching you again._  
  
The narrator is what?  
  
 _He just said "The narrator is what?"_  
  
Well! That's certainly given me something to think about for later, but as for right now if you try and keep that up we're going to be here all day, so I think I'll be keeping the scene going thank you.  
  
 _He said THE scene instead of MY scene, that means-_  
  
"Not helping!" Lisa said, taking a step back from the forty foot lizard. She glanced over the edge of the roof. It was only three stories, that was good enough for a van sized creature. And that was without the water. The violent, debris filled flood water, running fast enough that she couldn't see Alec anymore. She hesitated there, trapped between the Leviathan and the depths.  
  
 _Apparently the lizard's name is Leviathan._  
  
Lisa's hand shot for her wrist. "The lizard's name is Leviathan!" Lisa shouted into her armband. She left the speaker on as she stared into the face of her attacker, desperate for one last fact. Anything at all that might be useful. If she was going to die here she was going to die how she lived, damn it! Or at least, she would have if she had any choice in the matter. As it was, Leviathan simply reached over and crushed the arm that was wearing her armband like an orange juicer crushes an lemon into a glass of tonic water. Mingled locker juice and circuitry dripped between the Leviathan's smooth green fingers and onto the flooded gravel of the rooftop.  
  
 _The narrator is enjoying this._  
  
Am not.  
  
"Arrrgghhhh!" Lisa screamed into the giant claw currently about her arm, incredulous. A splash of lightning illuminated the featureless face of the Leviathan, utterly inscrutable in its motives in the moment before it released her, casting her down into a small puddle.  
  
Lisa was in shock, her wits all but abandoning her as she howled up at the three monster from the depths, but the Leviathan was already moving on. For a moment the watery silhouette of a forty foot lizard hung in the air in front of her, and then gallons upon gallons of salty water collapsed onto her all at once, washing her off the rooftop and into the swirling floodwaters below.  
  
 _Oh that's neat, he can leave a little after image made out of water when he moves._  
  
SCENE END.[/I][/I][/I]


	75. 8.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor reaches the lowest moment of her life.

You know, it didn't quite hit me until I was knocked off my feet by a ground shaking and meteoric impact somewhere on the other side of the city. I dusted myself off and stood back up again. Gathered my wits. Make sure to get my bearings and check in on the giant wall of water and ice headed for the city. Still going, but still a long way down the street from me.

As tough and invincible as I was, this wasn't a fight I could win. I mean, I probably could if I tried. Worse Taylors than me had done it. At least, I'd heard they had. Don't think they really got up to much after that I don't think. I reached out for my power of enhanced compartmentalisation, and realised too late that that was regretfully not a thing that I had. Enhanced dissociation was another matter, but I think that wasn't the sort of thing that counted as a super power.

I gazed worriedly out across the street to where another cape was finishing puking after their Strider fuelled teleportation. Striker, the hotel porter who had triggered after being trapped under a pile of luggage for 127 hours, was so useful that the Protectorate had had to ask him some five times if his powers secretly destroyed people's souls or gradually weakened their powers or something, although according to Lisa the only risk was the flashing lights whenever he teleported people.

I was this close to maybe thinking about possibly walking across the street at some point and asking him how he was doing instead of standing around and trying not to worry about my life when I heard Brian's voice.

"Grue," Brian said in that echoey and muffled tone that he always used whenever he had his helmet on and was trying to call me on his cell phone anyway, a thing that carried both annoyance and a touch of romance from the familiarity of that one particular issue with his communications. He said that, and then a robotic woman cut in with "Down, CD9."

Well. Brian. I mean, it wasn't my fault I couldn't help him, Striker must've just teleported us all at random. And there were four of us so it was bound to happen. Alec and Lisa were both probably fine.

"Tattletale!" Lisa said gleefully from the speakers on mine and the vomitting cape that I had been redeployed with's wrist. "Down, CD9."

Well.

I reached down to my wrist and slid the bloody armband off, lobbing it off down the rain smothered street to land in a puddle with a splash and a cry of "Kiddo down." I probably would have wrung my wrists if they didn’t hurt so bad right now. It was fine anyway. Must’ve been how it was all going to go down anyway.

At least we still had Alec and Rachel. That could be a fun story. Another twenty arcs of me hanging out with both those two. And the goat.

At least things couldn't get any worse, I thought, before I used my powerful reflexes to brace myself against the tidal wave that was about to hit me. A wave of dirty water swept the cape that had been vomiting away, along with the cars and the trash and all the other things in the world less good at standing still than I was.

It was dark.

It was dark, and it was night, and there was a storm, and the water was so full of mud and dust and sand that the streetlights couldn’t shine through it, and I was in over my head. Literally, not figuratively. Figuratively I was in the kind of headspace that I used to be in when I was a fourteen year old boy crying in the library and thinking that nobody would find me there. Figuratively, I probably would have been out of my depth in a paddling pool. And it wasn’t until then that I realised that bracing myself against a tidal wave while wearing sneakers so old and worn that the soles were flat and treadless was not the sort of thing that probably could have saved me from being swept away with the bins.  
Like a kid in a wave pool I was being pulled back and forth, and like a particularly unlucky kid in a wave pool my unprotected head was slapped into a wall.

I could have stopped there. I took a deep breath and it was all sludge. It was dark and I was bleeding, and my friends were gone, and, and, I wasn’t even wearing a costume anymore. I could just die here, and my dad wouldn’t ever have to know anything more about me than what he thought he knew.

[DESTINATION]  
{My heart was never slow}  
[DESTINATION]  
{Where you are I’ll always go}  
{I hear your voice on the radio}  
{I hear your voice on the radio}  
{I hear your voice on the radio. I hear your voice on the radio. I hear your voice on the radio}

The brick wall must’ve been the wake up call I needed, nowhere near as harsh as the one I deserved. I headbutted the wall back to show assert my dominance before swimming for the surface. With a triumphant scream like sharks would make if they could speak I breached the surface. There was no walruslike flopping as I made my way out and onto the roof of a three story building like it was the side of a pool. Just a brief and frantic bout of clawing at wet gravel.

There was a blur of light in the distance, as some blaster or another opened fire on Leviathan. Then another, and another. And then a thunderous roar of a dozen missiles. A series of explosions marked Dragon engaging the Lizard, and the boiling feeling in my blood was all the encouragement I needed. I glanced about for another rooftop to leap to.


	76. 8.4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor engages a big lizard, ready to have a go at him.

It was the sort of street you saw often enough in the Docks. Nondescript and covered in gore. As I strode down the locker juice red carpet I burned with energy, the strongest and most determined I'd ever felt in my life, steam rising where the rain hit my furious form as I slowly stepped over to join the back of the orderly queue of capes waiting to pummel Leviathan. Forty nine spaces ahead of me, Alexandria tried and failed to crack her invincible knuckles, legs low in a fighting stance that she likely did not need to make seeing as she was floating a foot above the ground.

There in the middle of the street, half submerged in waters that had been steadily residing for a short while, stood Leviathan. A latticework of blades surrounded the great plasticine endbringer's form, pinning a panicking Clockblocker up against the gargantuan lizard's leg like the serpent to Agnello, like Salmacis to Hermaphroditus, like water to a naked duck's back. The scene was being coordinated by Armsmaster, who waved his hands this way and that as the king of Brockton Bay's Nazis worked to try and interpret what he was pointing at and further sculpt the steel prison that he had erected. I could tell right away that it wouldn't work.

"It won't work," I whispered below the heavy rain and the howling tempestuous hurricanic blustery winds.

"Snot gonna work!" Dragon's speakers roared. Her gigantic mechsuit was sat atop Leviathan's head like the world's most threatening big cat, a full array of rockets and missiles pointed at the beast's head in preparation for the second he moved. Clockblocker nervously glanced up at the rockets, sweat or possibly rain trickling down his brow.

"Well why not?" Kaiser yelled back, incredulous.

"He's still got his tail loose he has!" spake the Dragon.

"Can someone get me out of here?" Clockblocker asked.

Armsmaster placed his hand on his chin, staring thoughtfully at the trapped ward. For a brief moment he looked as if he'd just had an idea, finger raised, but he lowered it a moment later.

It was then that Dauntless's voice yelled "DAUNTLESS!" heroically from the wrist of the cape standing in front of me. "Down, B4," the computer added.

"Wot?" Dragon's machine roared. I was with her on this one. Unlike Armsmaster, who started to dance. A slow and happy dance, of precise glee that reached an early finish when Clockblocker's face was pressed against the bars of Kaiser's cage and sliced like honey roast ham at the butcher's counter at Asda. The meaty chunks of the boy vanished in a cloud of swirling golden energy, presumably consumed by the universe at large. I'll be honest, I wasn't paying too much attention to him, seeing as I'd just realised that Leviathan was moving again.

Now more than ever life was like one long quick time event for me, time compressing and decompressing in an extraordinarily cinematic fashion. My powers made it easier to see what he was doing, just how purposeful the flailings were. No wild beast or mechanical intelligence could be responsiful for so purposeble a flick of the tail as the one that caught Kaiser on his back and sent him faceplate first into a sharp and pointy spike he'd been erecting with his power. Would that his power's Manton limitations had come with a resistance to pierce damage as well as slashing. Armsmaster had managed to lift his sharp and pointy stick into the air, a little faster and more precise than any human reasonably should have. The tip of his blade was shining and whirring like a platinum lawnmower as the Endbringer's tail's tip sliced itself off against it.

I collided with Alexandria and another two brutes midair as the lot of us commando lunged towards our foe's face, still trapped as it was like an insect in amber or a child to a lamppost in winter. I could have screamed, but I was too busy jumping the revenge queue for a chance at revenge. We collectively punched Leviathan free of his stockades, with the exception of the weakest brute among us who had regrettably been crushed by the impact of three more powerful brutes. The Leviathan wobbled his hands mechanically and precisely, perfectly keeping himself from falling over backwards into his own puddles. He was practically t posing as we briefly caught sight of the next tidal wave behind him.

The two halves of the street stretched like blutac and closed up behind Leviathan. Brick met brick as Leviathan dropped onto four legs for a moment, only for a horde of missiles to pummel him backwards up against the bricks. Like anyone in a fighting game against the wall of the map, Leviathan was juggled by missile after missile, and just about any blaster who wanted to look like they were contributing today.

Bang bang went the missiles as they blew up. Pew pew went Legend as he made his characteristic finger guns. Steam and smoke wreathed the Leviathan's form, and still I caught a glimpse of a chest that opened like an onion. No blood, no bone, just layers and layers of slightly darker turquoise to the Endbringer's form. And what I saw wasn't much darker. With a crack and a sploosh, water spilled out from behind it as the stretched buildings it had been forced into gave way.

"Beep!" Armsmaster yelled, and the barrage stalled for a moment. Force fields went up, fliers flew out of the way, and the wave that we had held back swept through us all. I glanced this way and that, and that way and this were capes looking this way and that for the Endbringer we'd just lost sight of. I looked that way, and heard screaming behind me. I looked this way, and saw a giant headless nazi. When I looked that way again Armsmaster was poking and swinging a halderd, I mean, the halberd, or like, the sword stick? Armsmaster was swinging it at a giant lizard. Where even the edgiest of capes had been no concern Leviathan was stepping back now, tipless tail lashing out behind him.

"Beep," Armsmaster began, and I listened. We all listened. We cried. Our hearts soared with every swing that peeled skin of the evil onion. Leviathan drew back and Legend lifted a finger to fire, but Armsmaster waved him back. This was his moment.

"Come on Thunderchild!" I yelled, raising a fist.

"Boop!" Armsmaster yelled victoriously. The Leviathan lifted a hand to block a decapitating strike. I blinked at the wrong time and missed the follow through, or maybe it was just a flash of lightning, or something, because it was like the one image of the blade hitting Leviathan was burned onto my mind. It was still. The Leviathan lifted his hand to examine his palm. The blade was lodged pretty darned deep, deep enough that were it a kitchen knife in the hand of someone who'd been peeling an apple in the wrong direction they would surely be screaming. Armsmaster dangled feebly from the handle of his weapon, suspended at head height with with a forty foot monster.

"Farewell Thunderchild," Trickster said from behind me. I knew that it was Trickster because that's how powerful I was. That, and he sounded exactly like Tattletale's impression of him. I turned to glare at him, and came face to face with four mismatched eyes on an otherwise featureless face. I gave up on the glare, feeling a little silly, and instead I glanced down at the halderd in my hands, and then up at the hand it was buried in, and then back at the face of the Leviathan.

With an unswing of my new halderd, I dislodged myself from the Leviathan's hand and fell with a splash into the swirling waters below. Subsequently, the Leviathan tilted his head down to look at me.

With a woosh, Leviathan's stump ended tail was nabbed by Alexandria, and the big monster was carried up up and away from me. Which is as good a place as any to end a chapter really.


	77. 8.5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our protagonist must pass the baton.

Photon Ma'am and her equally fit daughter Laserdream landed beside Armsmaster, making a small splash as they touched down into a foot and a half of water. You could see the family resemblance. They were both well fit and wore white costumes that'd been stained pink by the blood rain and then the regular rain, their hair plastered across their miserable looking faces. There was a dreariness there, a dreariness that looked how I felt. I looked around for the rest of New Wave and saw noone, and some part of me knew that if I still had my armband I might have heard their family's names.

"Beep," Armsmaster said. Electricity crackled from between the plates of his armour. I strode over towards him, or waded more like, and made to thrust his halderd back into his hands. He pushed me away, stumbling into the waters.

"What?" I asked.

Photon and Laserdream backed away from me, hands raised. Right, no armband, started today looking like a zombie. Fuck it. Might as well keep the halderd then.

"I lived, bitch. Now someone get me a lift so I can get back out there and get that motherfucker."

"Zigzag down, CA4," reported the wrists of the others. Followed shortly by a cry of "Night down, CA4."

Laserdream looked to her mother, and then back to me, and then to my halderd. After a brief few minutes of discussing how best to try and carry someone where I was frequently and condescendingly asked if I had ever had the power to fly, Laserdream set about carrying me off into battle. Together we soared above the canals of Brockton Bay, enjoying the scenic view of what was now probably the only Cape City with more of the things than Cape Coral, our only company each other and the sound of the rain and the sound of an armband saying "Browbeat" in a gruff voice and then "Down, BW8."

It was another minute and a half before we caught sight of Leviathan. He was tearing the head off of Stormtiger. Beside Stormtiger, a goat and an octopus made to retreat. One by one they met the same fate, and the woman in the doll mask watching them did nothing to save them. I saw Hookwolf lunge at Leviathan to avenge his fallen comrade, but the Endbringer picked Hookwolf up and smooshed him like he was made of play dough instead of knives, before rolling the knife ball at the woman in the doll mask.

I made a quick backwards headbutt, hitting the girl carrying me in the face. She let me go, and with the most powerful of my three point superhero landings yet I splashed down before Leviathan.

Leviathan wasn't even watching me. He was still there, he was just poking at a large door at the base of a very wide flight of stairs. Seeing as he was 40 foot tall, he was definitely not going to fit, but he was on his hands and knees, poking at the hinges for some reason. And then sinking his claws into the hinges for some reason, and then opening the door a slight crack for some reason. The crack was just enough to let the endless waters start trickle in. He turned towards me, a giant sized silhouette of water splashing down behind him as he stood back upright.

"You!" I spat, pointing a mangled finger towards him. He crawled back out, taking his sweet time as he got back onto his feet. I waited for him to turn around, and unlept back up into Laserdreams arms so I could do my landing again. The endbringer was unimpressed by my plunging skills, proof that there was no true human intelligence behind its sinister eyes. Laserdream splashed down into the water just offscreen, unconscious.

"Yeah, you," I said, when Leviathan had the audacity to point towards himself. "You can fuck right off back to canon where you belong!"

He evidently took offence to that because he lunged, fist held at a height that didn't really matter because he was big enough to punch my whole body all at once if he managed to hit me. I held the halderd up and pointed it at his knuckles, skewering them as I vaulted up and over his arm and onto his shoulder as we barrelled into the wall of a building. The nigh indestructible haldne of the halderd made a noise like a ruler when you bent it and let go, a satisfying twang to accompany us bouncing off the building. The heavy splash of the Leviathan flopping into his own perpetual puddle brought a satisfying smile to my rage filled face.. The Leviathan stood up again, examining the halderd jutting from his fist. He turned to look over his shoulder, and saw a very angry girl who'd crawled onto him jab a very powerful thumb into his only left eye.

Leviathan reached a hand to swat me off his shoulder, and I unvaulted, returning myself to the handle of the halderd with enough reverse momentum to wrench it free. The Leviathan scowled down at me with three eyes and one bleeding socket. From knuckle to wrist I'd sliced his left hand in Mark Twain, and his tipless tail scythed behind him like an out of control hose. I was full of hate, and he was alright now. He raised a fist, only to move that hand to guard his face the moment my eyes started glowing.

"Hate!" I yelled, unleashing the full power of my powerful power. I watched blue skin glow like hot coals made from the azurest of lapis lazuli. More and more water fell out of his skin as he recoiled, and the heat I'd imbued his skin with turned it into a cloud of steam that stung my eyes and cooked my skin like the Tayloriest of bao buns. Something heavy and blunt hit me, flinging me into and ultimately through the wall of the building we'd just twanged off, and instinctually I unflung myself back out of the rubble. I glanced this way and that, looking for a shape in the steam. If I hadn't, I might never have seen the giant hand that swatted me into the pavement.

Oomf.

My eyes hung open, staring as Leviathan loomed over me all vast and terrible and Prometheuslike. Contemptuously triclopean. He lifted his hand again, readying another swat, and I lifted the unbreakable halderd up between us. The halderd's halft bounced off my frog belly and splashed down into the water. Ah. My hand was a little bit broken. More than a little bit. Fingerless.

Leviathan lowered his hand, and started to turn. My shattered hand gave him the best thumbs down I could manage. Wretched. Unfair. Disgraceful. 6/10.

A bodyfull of salt water was dumped into my gasping mouth by his passing. It was a mild discomfort in the face of broken bones and everything else today had had, but it was something that was going to be stuck there unless I tilted my head to let it all drain out. So I did, turning my head to let the water spill out, managing to catch a glimpse of a bright gold light streaking across the sky.

FFS.

I gurgled a sob, speechless. A ring road's worth of van sized creatures barked and honked their way down the street, splashing as they chased after Leviathan. Like a child on the side of the road when a bus drives past them was I soaked by the monstrous traffic's passing.

FFFS. For fuck's fucking sake. It wasn't even a minute. It wasn't even a fucking minute I'd have had to have waited. The rain stopped. The clouds turned white and fluffy. Birds chirped and seagulls squawked.

I lay there for a good while. Good enough for the people in the bunker nearby to start screaming about the water level rising. Somebody else was going to have to help them, because right now all that was keeping me going right now was pink and squirmy and hiding near my small intestines. And as long as it was there, I still didn't get to stop. And why would I want to? It wasn't like Brian was dead and Lisa was dead and Alec wasn't dead. This must have been the worst go anyone had ever had at Leviathan. I failed to breathe a sigh. I probably needed unsmooshed lungs for that. I had a go at sighing without breathing and failed. Miserably. At least I'd never have to see Emma, Sophia, or whatsherface again.

Somewhere near me, a girl gasped, as if taking her first breath after swallowing a red pill. I forced my head to flop ack over to the other side, neck creacking as my head came to another rest staring up at some brown haired rando in a diamond print zorb suit. She glanced this way and that, hands clutching at her hair in angush. And then she caught sight of me.

"Taylor?"

FFFS. Whatsherface was here.

"Mads Clements," whatsherface said, mouth on autopilot while her eyes were frozen with horror.

"I'm sorry, I completely forgot you existed," I gurgled, forcing myself to smile fondly for a moment.

"It happens," she said.

"You're just the worst," I said.

"Sorry," she said. Her face didn't shift from the mortified expression it already had. Me on the other hand, I had termites in my smile. Butterflies in my tummy. Worms in my guts. And a half remembered draft of an idea bouncing around in my head that I was dying to get written down. Fuck it. She probably deserved this.

"Help me," I croaked, making my voice all deep and low and weak. Not that I had to try much. While her eyes were staring into my broken glasses, my good hand slowly inched towards the hole in my chest that Night had left earlier. Madison shook and trembled, but she took another step towards me, and another. My fingers tighten8as787ned 6bout sahghhgghh, and I clenched my teeth, promising myself it was just a few steps more. Closer, I pleaded, Cl05>//.er, close enough to hold me as I went. She grabbed my broken hand and forced herself to smilx,xm, amd I smiled back, wide and terrible and froggy, hand about the neck of the Worm.

Madison Clements leaned down to listen to my last whispered words.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"No, you're Madison Clements," I drggkk toww. She pulled back a little, a confused look on her face that turned to horror as my thumbless hand pulled her into a hrrhgh;ll99011...g.

"What?" Madison roared.

"Take that worm, you!" I roared, and in one foul motion I tore the Worm from mmyusuuuhhhsjjsjjkkkkllllllkkllllkkanzerke and tmlnkttsptngmtchjttymschnsh my ear.


	78. 8.6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our protagonist struggles with the injuries the fight against the big lizard has left them with.

I screamed, frantically trying to grab the tail of the thing that had just squirmed its way into my ear. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. It was going in my ear, it was...No. No. I tried to force my ear shut around it and crushjkj igghlhhlk. Shit. Shit. It was in my brain and I just neegjkljh toajjkslkklk but it hurt too much to even try.

"Why the fuck would you do that?" I spat, shooting a glance down at Taylor's body. The face of a broken paper doll smiled up at me, sodden with water.

"WTF..." I whispered, my words drowned out by the splashing as I stepped slowly back from her. The fingerless hand that had clung to me was crumpled up, covered in a mess of veins and blood splatter that had been drawn on in crayon. I was hallucinating. That was it. It had to be a master power or something someone was using. Or... or the Worm in my head. I just had to get the Worm out and things would all be normal again, and I could go back to eating talking donuts with Sophia and Emma like nothing had ever happened.

I heard panting that wasn't just the sound of me panicking. Something big was panting right behind me. And drooling. Panting, and drooling, a steady stream of drool falling on my shoulder. I turned around, face to face with a dachsund the size of a UPS van.

Hellhound.

"Bitch," Hellhound snarled from above me. I looked past the dachshund's face to see the girl riding it. A plastic mask bearing the saggy and ecstatic features of a happy pug poked out from under the hood of a bright yellow fisherman's coat.

"Hi?" I managed.

"Where's Taylor?" Hellhound snarled. "Bitch."

"She's dead," I blurted, trying not to look at Hellhound's dog's fist sized teeth.

"Prove it," Hellhound barked. She slid out of the saddle of the dachshund, landing right beside me with a bent golf club in hand. I glanced at the tip, where nails had been soldered to the driving face.

"She's right there," I said, pointing behind me. Hellhound stared me in the eyes. I turned to look at the body. Nothing. She was...

"She was right there..." I stammered, taking a step away from Hellhound. "I swear..."

"I keep telling you, Bitch," Hellhound said, taking a step towards me, club, in, hand. I raised my hands between us only to get a snarl from the dogs behind her.

"Teleporter!" a man behind me said. Me and Hellhound span about, and faster than I could take in his costume I blurted "I need healing."

He touched a hand to my chest and in a rush of cool air we were off, reappearing in a taped off section of the floor in a cramped hospital. Nurses and bleeding capes tiptoed around us, and for a moment I thought I could catch my breath and thank him, but then the teleporter shoved me out of his landing spot and vanished off for another cape to roughly rescue.

"Your name?" someone asked. I looked to the side of me, and an older woman in a nurse's uniform flanked by a man in a PRT uniform.

"Browbeat," I replied. "I'm a hero with the Brockton Bay Wards."

"She's lying," the PRT officer cut in. "For one Browbeat's a man, and for another Browbeat is dead."

"Well neither of those things are true!" I started, my voice a little too loud. The PRT officer had his gun trained on me in an instant. I raised my hands and took a step back, careful to avoid the teleporter's space on the floor.

"Bullwinkle Tomatoe with an e Eighty Three!" I blurted.

"What?" the officer hissed.

"Today's code is Bullwinkle Tomatoe with an e Eighty Three."

The officer kept his gun trained on me, slowly reaching for his radio with his free hand, before barking "Browbeat up, CB4," into it.

"Except the man part," I mumbled.

"Except what?" The PRT officer had his gun trained on me in an instant. I raised my hand and took another step back, and before I could explain anything to the officer the teleporter flickered back into place, accompanied by a dog masked woman in a poncho. Shit! I hadn't thought she'd follow me. The teleporter tried to push her out of the square and she went nowhere, growling at him for a moment before giving the teleporter a two handed shove that knocked him into the officer. The kerfuffle that kerfollowed kerseemed to be kerkeeping them occupied, for now.

I reached out with my power, gathering another handful or two of meat from the meat dimension. Stretching, teasing, tugging. With any luck, Hellhound was looking for a five six girl with black hair in a diamond print costume. A six foot bald man in the same costume might just escape her notice for long enough to get my head looked at before it turned into an apple.


	79. 8.7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our protagonist meets back up with the Undersiders for the first time.

The background noise of screaming, shouting, and a hundred heart monitors beeping out of sync made for a noise a bit like computer class whenever Sparky got too close to a computer.

I checked the curtain again, watching a hooded figure's silhouette as it loomed above the table. Her hair fell through the hood in a way that made her shadow a sort of monk Davy Jones. How long did it take to heal someone?

Part of me felt guilty for trying to jump the queue like this, but this was the only way I was going to get any treatment without the PRT locking me in cell for three weeks until they could determine that the Worm wasn't trying to take over my brain and make me do evil things like ask for a better allowance or hazard pay. Which I really hoped it wasn't. I looked myself over. Wet, damp, but not even a scratch on the Protectorate issue rhyzome. The muscles I'd given myself had stretched it to an awkward Protectorate Propaganda tightness, but the mutant fungus would probably withstand it. Still... it was a bit much. I shunk myself to a far more reasonable 5'9. With the same proportions. And while I was at it, I used my power again, trying to feel out the thing wriggling inside my head. No. Nopghkl. Touching ittghhhhg even with my muscles or my skull made me feel like Emma had made me swallow a bottle of Vodka again.

With a flutter of plastic and a rattle of metal on metal, Panacea strode from her patient's bedside, flicking her hands in a way that got send water and locker juice everywhere.

I caught a glimpse of the bed’s occupant behind her. She was tied down with chains, handcuffs and a couple of bits of ropes. Tubes ran into her nose and mouth, and an IV into her arm. A mask in the shape of a smiling white face hung from the wall. Shit, was that Sophia?

"You're creepy, you know that?" Panacea began.

"What?" I said, my attention snapping back to her instead of that half second I'd seen of the next room

"You were hovering outside. I could see you through the curtains the whole time."

"Sorry, I didn't want to..."

"Who are you?" Panacea demanded.

"Browbeat?" I said. "We met at the Wards HQ after the bank robbery," and then when she squinted at me a little and tried looking at me from a different angle, I added "Miss Militia shot me."

"Ok," she said, still nodding her head a little like she wasn't following a thing. "So why are you stalking a healer?"

"I need healing."

"You look fine."

"There's a Worm in my brain, and I need you to..."

"I don't do brains," Panacea said, starting to wander off. "And please stop saying everything out loud."

What?

"You heard me."

I was about to say something back when a gauntleted hand seized me by the back of the neck and lifted me to my feet. Wait? Was I? I wobbled, relying heavily on the painfully hard grip to stay balanced.

"Beep," Armsmaster roared.

"Beep?" I replied. Two months with the Wards and I still didn't understand a word he was saying.

"He asked what you were doing here," Panacea said.

"I need healing?" I repeated.

"Beep."

"Doctor!"

Armsmaster didn't listen, instead slowly leading me towards the blue suited body of Legend and... shit, not Ms Militia again. She had her rocket launcher out and everything. Legend just smiled and waved at me.

"Browbeat, I presume?" Legend spoke, his voice lacking the boom it had when he'd delivered his speech. His pomp remained.

"Its a good thing you survived too. Armsmaster was just telling me about that immortal double Nazi you have here. Brockton Bay is so interesting, wouldn't you say?"

"Night?" I said, caught off guard by the break in his words.

"That's the one. I had a quick look at some data Dragon had, apparently she's what happens when you allow religious exemptions for conversion therapy. Its a good thing I singlehandedly changed congress' mind on that one, you'd never have Gesellschaft operating in the United States."

"That's good to hear?" I said.

"Armsmaster says you're a shapeshifter, correct?"

"She is," Ms Militia said. I would have said something, but the look she gave me above her mask strangled the words in my throat.

"Splendid," Legend said. "Can I see what you look like normally?"

"Normally?" I asked.

"Beep," Armsmaster beeped in alarm, pointing a finger past us at a team of what was undoubtedly battle damaged villains. I was almost relieved to see them. A girl in a purple and black bodysuit with an incomplete game of hangman on the front of her bodysuit, a cape over her left arm. A man in a battle damaged black biker costume and helmet that made him look like a butch drone that had just been savaged in the jaws of a fierce and powerful dragon. A girl in a dog mask and a yellow anorak. And a long haired boy with all of the bisexual energy from either of the leads of The Road to El Dorado, who nodded his book accurate Phantom of the Opera mask at me. The Undersiders. All of them apart from Kiddo.

Armsmaster spoke, his voice a hair away from being a growl, "Beep."

"I lived," Tattletale said.

"Beep!" Armsmaster spat, electricity arcing between the panels of his shoulders.

"Its a good thing I'm a trained lifeguard, or they might have drowned," Regent said, his voice smoother than buttercream. He leaned over and exchanged a brief and one sided hug with Grue.

"We lived," Tattletale said. "Bitch?"

The plastic dog mask's lifeless eyes stared into my soul as Hellhound stepped forwards. She pointed me out with her golf club. "Some girl in that same costume said Taylor was dead."

I did my best to puff my chest out a little, standing as straight as I could manage.

"They're the same person bitch, I didn't even need my power to tell me that."

Damn. I knew I should've stayed six foot.

"Miss Militia, Legend said, looking away from Tattletale and towards the woman with the gun, the woman next in line to be in charge of me. "Can you escort these villains away? The crossover is over, we don't have to pretend there's any solidarity between us anymore."

"My power says there's a good fifty villains in earshot that would really like to hear Legend say that one again," said Tattletale.

"And funnily enough, not one of them has ever fought the Triumvirate," Legend remarked.

“You start a fight here,” Grue spoke, "See what fucking happens. Your only power is shooting light and my only power is turning light off."

"I can also fly," Legend said, hovering a little. His cape billowed with the force of the potential heroic energy that would be released if he were to plunge here and now. Miss Militia had a rocket launcher trained on Grue, and Armsmaster stood around and looked sad because he had no weapons to hold right now. Hellhound gripped her golf club tightly, her eyes on me. Grue had a fist balled and ready to throw a punch. It was a Mexican standoff, and neither side looked ready to back down.

"I can't believe we got to meet my third favourite member of the triumvirate today" Regent said. Legend said nothing at first. He lowered himself back to the ground and glowered at Regent from behind his domino mask. It took a chuckle from Regent to get him to break his stony stare.

"Just who are these people, Ms Militia?"

The Undersiders, I thought. The gang that had visciously fed Aegis's spleen to dogs, and viscously poked out Lung's eyes with a stick, and defeated the combined forces of the Protectorate and Wards and New Wave in the middle of the most guarded public relations event in Brockton Bay history.

"I was asking Ms Militia."

"What?" I said.

"I said I was asking Ms Militia, Browbeat. But because my question is already answered, do you have any idea what they want with you?"

I stared at Ms Militiia's rocket launcher, still trained on the Undersiders. I was too afraid to look away. "No," I lied.

"Well, you can talk with them for now and debrief with us later. And don't think we didn't see you having a look behind that curtain. If you go looking at people's secret identities again Ms Militia is going to have to come up with a punishment for you."

"Wait, isn't Armsmaster..."

"Beep!" Armsmaster snapped, furious. I decided not to say anything else. The three heroes tromped off down the hall, leaving me alone with four of Brockton Bay's most dangerous villains.

[i/]Aw, that's nice of her to say.[/i]

"Don't any of you lot try anything!" Legend called back.

"We won't," Regent called after him. I turned back around to look at Regent, and in that moment the man flounced towards me. I jumped, my shoulder bumping his shoulder off me before he could get a secure lean.

"Don't mind him. He does that to everyone," said Grue.

"Good to know..."

"We want to know what happened to Kiddo," Tattletale said.

"What?"

"Kiddo, Taylor, whatever. Same person. We need to know what happened to Taylor."

"I don't..." I began, only to falter. Shit me. Was she... did I?

"You helped to make her a supervillain. Feel free to have some moral turmoil about your role in the second worst day of a dead girl's life offscreen, but if it helps my power says that if you didn't bully her this Taylor probably would have become some sort of militant protester by her mid twenties."

"What?" I said. I didn't... Tattletale was the thinker of the group, but her power was supposed to let her read minds, not see the future.

"Well it does a lot of things, but right now we're running out of time," Lisa said, in a patient and quiet tone, one of understanding for when someone was going through a lot.

"No need to get sarcastic. Listen, right now you're supposed to confess something to us and then leave."

I... there was something to her words. It felt... It felt like I needed to confess something and then leave. Not like a master power or a compulsion, like... like when you watched a film and knew what everyone was about to say. Wait, that sounded exactly like how a master power would feel. I knew it, it was that fucking Worm...

"Shit a banshee, they really do have it..." Lisa said.

It was all way too much for me right now. "You want me to tell you something and leave?" I asked.

"Yes!" the Undersiders shouted in unison.

I took a moment to steel my nerves. I couldn't literally turn them to steel, but I made them as hard as my power would allow. I took a deep breath, and thought about my words, and

"Get on with it!"

"I died and then I came back again and Taylor was dying and then she turned herself into a puppet and stuck a Worm in my ear and now her body is gone and I can't stop thinking in words!"

I couldn't see Brian's face because he was wearing a helmet, but the way him and Alec threw up their arms and shrugged in Lisa's direction told me that none of them had any more of a clue what was happening than I did. But Rachel stared at me, her golf club clattering to the floor.

"So... I'm gonna go now." I said, jabbing a thumb away from them. I made it a few steps before Brian called after me.

"Wait!" Brian called after me.

"What?" I called after me.

"You're a shapeshifter, right?"

"Yes?!?"

"What pronouns do you use?"

"They/them."

"I knew it!" Brian roared. I rolled my eyes, wandering back off after Ms Militia.


	80. How Ironic, They Aren't Even In This Chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lisa and Mads have a word about the way things are headed.

How was a city like Brockton Bay supposed to pay its respects to all the heroes, villains, and concerned heavy metal fans who had died protecting it? A big rock on top of a hill, with a chisel left nearby so anyone who could be bothered could write the names of the dead on it. Brockton Bay's memorial to the Double Event of 2011, the first ever appearance of two endbringers, was a ugly black chunk of marble that had been dropped here by Alexandria. The overall shape was like Chubster's body, if you squinted hard enough. A fitting memorial for the first man to have fallen. The names of half of New Wave popped out at me, alongside Aegis and Gallant. And Taylor "Kiddo" Hebert.

Only I was here today, alongside less than one other person. The walk up the hill was too much for anyone to be bothered. A shame, cos the view from up here would probably have been good if things had gone differently. The rest of the city lay strewn before me, free for me to watch from the top of this large hill. In any given arararara there was flooding, collapsed buildings, and buildings collapsing because of the flooding. More the half of the city was dark, and it was already seven o clock.

"The East Wind is coming," I said. It felt like I should say something.

"Secret fourth season," came a voice in reply. Lisa. Wait, Tattletale. Fuck.

"It's okay, Taylor was bad for that too."

"Yeah, well I'm not Taylor," I said, turning slowly and carefully to face her.

Lisa'd had hadded thed sense to dress warmer than me. Her hare was one of two buns whose fluffy faces poked out of the hood of her big wooly parka. She had a backpack slung over one shoulder, because she only had one arm to hang a backpack on. The other sleeve of her designer parka was stitched to always be stuffed into one of her pockets, in a way that made her seem like she was warming her hand from a distance.

"I shouldn't have lost this," Lisa said.

"No, it was a shame."

"No, I mean, really, I shouldn't have lost this. Someone messed up the way things were supposed to go."

"What about Taylor dying? Was that the way things were supposed to go?"

"She was always going to die. My power says its supposed to be some sort of joke."

"It doesn't feel funny."

"Yeah, well I keep telling my power that and it just keeps saying I wouldn't get the reference."

I looked out over Brockton Bay. Parts of it were exploded, burned, drowned, crushed. The lockers at the edge of the docks had been flushed out, a tide of nightmares forced to relocate into lockers across the city. The Protectorate HQ's forcefield had collapsed, leaving tons of iron to collapse atop the boardwalk and be claimed by the Merchants by the right of dibs. From this far away, I could see lasers burning through the sky where capes fought.

"Is this... Is this the way things are meant to be?"

"My power said that was a rhetorical question, but my instincts say you don't just mean Brockton Bay."

"I need to know what's going on."

Lisa smiled. She reached her hand into her parka and pulled her hare out and handed it to me to hold. The hare shivered in the cold wind.

"You have no idea how long I've been waiting for a chance for a recap," Lisa said.

I held the hare close. I was shivering a little now too.

"I don't know how long ago, but at some point in the past a man who calls himself Coil gains his power. He has a power that lets him live through things twice. He gets to pick if he has a steak bake or a chicken bake. Goes out drinking after work or has a quiet life in. And he's living through both of these until he makes up his mind, and then suddenly one possibility existed and the other never did. At least, from his perspective. One day he gets greedy. One day he decides to become a supervillain, and that's when his power starts the timeline we're in right now."

"Ok..." I said, starting to piece it together. I was glad I had the hare.

"Right now, at any point, if he thinks one of his lives is going better than the other, we all stop existing."

"What the fuck!" I couldn't help but yell.

"And that is one of the two separate existential threats to us right now."

"Two?"

"Oh yeah, Coil's the second worst problem we have right now. As long as he's entertained, then we aren't all going to painlessly cease to exist in the blink of an eye. But on top of Coil's power, right now someone is narrating things that are happenening to us."

"I know," I said, hoping that I was keeping it to a minimum right now.

"Not you. Someone else changed it so I'd get hurt. More than that, he knew what the Leviathan was. My power and my paranoia are both saying that we're dealing with a worldwide conspiracy with the power to create and control Endbringers, and unlike Coil right now I know next to nothing about it."

"How Can I help?"

"Well I could do with a hand."

I groaned. How did I respond to that?

"Punch Alec in the dick, he's been making jokes like that since the moment he finished saving my life."

"I can't."

"Can't?"

"I'm still with the Wards. They don't let you talk to Supervillains unless you're punching them in the face or flirting with them."

"Yeah no thanks. Aroace and that isn't changing. But you know what could change? You. Your alliance. Not like, just you because you're a changer."

"Stranger."

"Change sides."

"What?"

"Join the Undersiders. We have a hundred doggos, two bunnies, and a neon pink goat."

I shrugged. How did I respond to that. Confess that I wasn't sleeping because Director Piggot and Ms Militia had me on night shifts? That I had nowhere to go outside of work because my house had no electricity and my school was now nothing but swimming pools? That I was angry enough in general without having to be told by PR again that going out as anything other than a hypermuscular dude was going to confuse the public too much, even after Denise got to just breeze through it all?

The wind blew hard from the east, cold and disappointing. The pixie cut I'd given myself today was a little too little hair for a day like this. I'd just felt like trying it. Maybe a beanie hat or something would help. For now though, I flexed my power a little, pushing my growing hair out of my face. I made it thick and heavy enough to keep me warm, a great big red cloud.

I sighed a little, looking out across the bay. A tiny black cloud had gathered about the top of the Brocktpool Tower. A zombie boat had lurched onto the docks and began devouring emptied lockers. Genoscythe's broken chariot was dangling from the top of the Forsberg gallery.

"How could I leave the Wards behind?" I asked.

"Well I could ask you about whether you prioritise the friends you made defending the status quo with the Wards or the chance to make a real difference, or you could just walk away with me like, right now and you get all the gold bricks Rachel found in Taylor's pockets."


	81. The Coiling Horror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An insight into the tangled mind of a man that hold's the universe's fate in his hands.

Coil held firmly to the late Mr Pritter's shoulders, holding him closely and tenderly. His snakelike tongue traced the cracks across the back of Mr Pritter's skull and slithered on in in search of one last morsel of the delicious brain meats of an ex henchman. Safely ensconced in his underground base, glad in his tightest costume and surrounded by scores of henchmen and impersonators, this was Coil at his most comfortable, a spider at the centre of a vast web made not of lies and deceit but of the honest truth that this was his world.

A universe away, Thomas Calvert woke up in an ordinary house in the southwest end of the city. It was a bit of a commute to get to work, but that was the price you had to pay to have a lawn in Brockton Bay. He waved out the window at the neighbours as they led their two girls out the house, and off to another day at school at Arcadia High School. He'd already dressed himself in khakis and a button up polo shirt, and his golf clubs were waiting in the boot of his Stanza.

The henchman that Coil was snacking on had been a very unpleasant man, the kind that even your dear narrator is unsettled by. An acceptable murder if you will. The kind that even the ordinary reader can excuse, nay, cheer for. Urged on by the panic that grips the heart of even the most optimistic vision of the United States through the eyes of a mind right of left. Every one of Coil's henchmen was like that you know. At least, the rank and file. The clowns and the capes and the snipers were all lured by the promise of money and power and the threat that their universe could vanish from under them in one afternoon.

The golf course that Thomas "Tommy" Calvert, deputy director of the PRT East North East, was going to later today was a very unpleasant golf course. A real test of his skills. If he managed to brain one more member of New Wave on his drive he'd never live it down. It was their fault for always flying over the first hole, but if he had any hope of not looking like a buffoon in front of the Anderses and the Mayor he'd need to keep all his wits about him. No matter how tempting it might be to try and complete the roster should Panacea be walking past.

Coil opened the bulkhead doors of his prime sanctum at much the same time that Tommy got into his Stanza, and the two set out for work at much the same time. It was less taxing on his very powerful brain if he tried to line things up a little between worlds. How convenient too that Coil never needed to drive himself anywhere, seeing as most of Coil's Brockton Bay was currently a foot below sea level. Still, it was a bit of a drive for Tommy to get to work, and Coil was already in his office.

"Clean away the Pritter man," Coil rasped, directing it to no one but expecting his will to be done. He bent his head and crouched to get through the door, standing upright once he was free to wander the collapsible bridge that spanned the vast pit in which his very own pet monster languished. Still, he was forced to dodge his head thisaway and that to avoid the clanging dangling lightbulbs that illuminated the clattering steel of the bridge.

On the other side lay two Coils, one in black on white and one in white on white with only a black outline to the snake. They were dwarfed by him, and the captured child held between them was so small beside Coil as to resemble a penguin before an Orca.

"The universe ends..." Coil drawled, tired from a sleepless but thoroughly enjoyable night.

"Thirteen point three seven."

Worrisome. Worrisome indeed that whatever threatened his fantasy of power still lingered. How was he to enjoy his time here if it had to end?

"The Taylor child returns..."

"One in a million."

Better news. One of her was enough to deal with. Two worlds of her at once had been enough to induce weeks of headache. Which, you know, I think I can empathise with Coil on that one listeners.

Coil's heart was warm that morning, and so it was that he spent his final question on a small act of what passed for kindness in his black heart. "What is the chance that you get candy today?" Coil asked, all but yawning.

"100 percent."

"Good... good girl. Someone get the girl her candy, I... I think I need a nap."

One reality saw Coil stagger back across the walkway, his very own pet monster trapped in the great pit beneath. He rested his claws on the railing, a weary sigh overcoming him as he strained to make out the mishappen shape that surely lay at the bottom. His imagination painted a picture of something like a pile of intestines draped about a flock of sheep and sheepdogs that had once been the size of vans. He couldn't help but picture the captain's face in amongst them, staring up at him. With a long and woeful trudge, Coil slunk towards his command centre. Maybe he could sleep in his cozy little command chair, freshly obtained from the PRT's seized items auction. Maybe in the cosiest of chairs a monster might not dream of monsters.

The other saw Tommy driving still, right past the Forsburger, a forlorn expression from a world away creeping onto his face. He stopped for a red light just beyond the Forsburger, the smell of grease and meat worming its way through his tightly closed windows. Damn it. He'd be craving one all day now.


	82. 9.1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first of the new Brockton Bay Wards is menaced by a sinister figure with silver skin and a penchant for violence.

999 999 999

Oh how its been so long, we're so sorry we've been gone. We were busy writing songs. For. You.

Hello dear listeners. I simply must apologise, it seems we have an entire arc of interludes ahead of us. And what with that awful Taylor girl dead, why, there's nobody left to tell these tales but me and my humble friends. So in the hopes of keeping things interesting, myself and the rest of the newly christened Coffeehouse 5 have decided to share this one out. I know, I know, the prospect of not getting to read my darling commentary on this whole abysmal story must come as a huge disappointment, but as an old friend of mine once told me, "Variety is the spice of life," and I am painfully aware that the Slaughterhouse arc is fast upon us. So, in order to keep things interesting for us all, just for this last little while, you'll just have to guess who exactly is the one narrating each chapter. It'll be a fun little game.

Now let's all make a start on this shall we?

It was seven thirty in the evening and all Weld could think was that an hour was too long for baggage claim. He wouldn't have minded, but he was seemingly the only person in the entire airport. There had been staff for sure, waiting to greet him as he got off the plane and waiting to check his passport. But the shops that sold perfume and the little restaurants that sold stuff like pretzel sandwiches were all seemingly closed. A startlingly empty place for a young robot.

He stared at the start of the little carousel, where plastic flaps dangled tantalisingly and segment after segment of the little shell of the conveyor belt slide out from underneath. Slowly, they parted to reveal a single man in a uniform, riding out along the carousel atop one of Weld's suitcases, the bags full of his shirts and his DJ gear trailing along behind this strange and nondescript man.

"Hello Weld," the nondescript man said as he rounded a corner on the belt, bringing him briefly in line with Weld. "My name is Jack. I must apologise, we're a little shortstaffed right now so I'm afraid I'll be taking your luggage today."

"Why thank you."

The man sprung to his feet. He took a moment or two to catch his balance what with the conveyor belt still going and all, but he managed it and proceeded to dismount, roughly pulling Weld's bags off after him and laying them atop a trolley. Weld took note of the plastic handle on the trolley, the only part he could hope to lay a hand on without making a complete arse of himself. He could certainly have done it himself, if he was careful about it. The man set about pushing the luggage off towards a set of double doors, and after a few confused moments Weld hurried along after him.

On the other side of the doors was the outside world, where the evening sun shone on a half a dozen "nonlethally" armed soldiers guarding a sturdy and loathsome woman with starchy Bad Canary yellow hair and a particularly ugly suit. Almost as ugly as her. They were all arranged in a particularly aesthetically unpleasing manner in front of their armoured fascist wagon, with the man manning the turret poking his head out to give Weld a little salute.

"Weld, I'm glad you made it," the rather odious civil servant said, extending a hand. Weld glanced at the extended hand for a moment, double checking that she wasn't wearing a joy buzzer, and then took it.

"Director Piggot, I presume?"

"You presume correctly."

"Where is everyone, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Nobody wants to fly into an airport shaped like a swastika at the best of times," Director Piggot said, a look of embarassed mortification plastered across her face. The nondescript man suppressed a snigger.

"I was wondering about that." Weld said.

"Tell me, what do you know about Brockton Bay?"

"Cape city, survived a Slaughterhouse 9 attack before they were popular, Nazi capital of the Northeast?"

"Good, Armstrong briefed you."

"That was from a billboard in passport control."

"We'll have that billboard taken out," Director Piggot said, nodding towards one of her guards. The guard saluted, and the nondescript man standing behind him saluted too. "This isn't the first time a supervillain attack has sparked a powder keg of resentment which lead to a domino chain of homeless citizens joining supervillains and resorting to triba... to factional infighting... on my watch," Director Piggot began, a strong and sombre look on her face. "And I dare say it won't be the last. Are you ready to take command of the local Wards?"

"Yes Ma'am."

"Good. The team here was taller than your old team in Boston. Smaller now that the tallest members have all died. It currently consists of Browbeat, Clockblocker, Kid Win, Shadow Stalker, and Vista. Are you familiar with your classifications?"

"Yes."

"Good. They're brutish, strikerish, tinkery, breakery and shaky respectively."

"I see," Weld said, immediately grasping what it was he that had to work with.

"Are you familiar with the classifications of the Archer's Street Merchants, Coil's Coils starring Coil, Empire Eighty Eight, the Faultly Crue, L337 and friends, Lord Buckethead's League, the Travellers, and the Undersiders?"

"What happened to ABBA?" Weld asked. His brief had very specifically mentioned

"They disbanded. The others are all still in operation, and have been trying their hardest to turn this city into a no man's land."

"Your intel must be out of date or something, you completely forgot about the Coffeehouse 5," the nondescript man said, strutting back from the patrol van. He plucked a handkerchief from Director Piggot's suit pocket and wiped the red from his silver hands, before tucking the handkerchief back away. Director Piggot furrowed her brow a little, glancing between each of her three guards for any signs of worry. Nothing. Not a trace. And then the metal man named Jack just slunk away back towards the empty airport.

"What was..." Weld began, only for Director Piggot to raise a hand. The body of the man in the turret slipped out of his hatch, landing in front of the passenger door.

"Strangery," she declared, when Jack was at last out of sight. "Probably the same one that's been stealing all of our fire axes. I'll need you to file an incident report when you're done introducing yourself to the Wards."

The two of them stepped around the bodies of three guards, the driver, and the gunner. They made sure to close the windows and lock the doors on their tax payer paid tank. And I promise you, not even that was enough to get rid of the proverbial cold sweat trickling down Weld's cold iron back.

It was a long and awkward ride, riddled with promises of fame and empty assurances that Weld was one of the good ones. Hollow comparisons to what the PRT and Protectorate had done for Legend. And that metal boy with the heart of gold ate it up.

The silent elevator of the PRT headquarters chugged silently to a silent halt, smoothly not jittering and not rattling in the slightest when Weld pulled back the elevator's cagelike door with the canny use of the handkerchief he carried around in his trouser pocket for things like this. He was glad to be out of that shiny metal trap, and if it wasn't for the steel bannister on the stairwell he'd have gone up that instead.

Stepping out into the hallway, he slid his keycard up to the scanner and performed the arcane ritual of swiping it three or four times before it worked. An old PRT trick to keep any old person from using a given door, I do believe.

Through that door Kid Win and Vista were sat at the main table of the room, both in their civilian clothes. And on work hours too. Weld was enough of a worthless wretch that he'd probably want to speak to them about that later. Past the two of them was Shadow Stalker, tall and dark skinned, her pale mask framed by thick and rubbery tentacles. Weld for one was glad there was a little eye candy on the team. She spared Weld no more than a glance before looking back at the phone mounted on her bracer. Clockblocker sat in a chair at the edge of the room, arms folded in lap. Freckled, with long red hair that reached just below the shoulders and obscured the faces of the clocks on her pauldrons.

"Hello," Weld spoke, with his most inspiring but still down to earth and human voice, as learned from that dynamic and all around wonderful mentor of his back in Boston. I'm not being sarcastic there, I actually like the man's approach to things well enough.

"I'm Weld, former head of the Boston Wards, and I'm going to be taking charge here. I know you've not been in the game for a while, and I know this whole Endbringer situation might just have set you back a little. It might take a while, but I feel with a bit of hard work and effort we can make the Brockton Bay Wards the best team in the league."

They were all looking at him now. Good. He had their attention. Now he just needed their admiration.

"I know what you're thinking. You've not had a match in years. You've never even played the professionals, but with my leadership I really think we can make it to the top. I'm not saying I haven't lost a match, but when you're one hundred to one that one stops looking so scary."

Shadow Stalker chuckled, a deep and throaty noise that echoed through the room. Weld raised a metal eyebrow at that. "What's so funny?" he asked.

"What the fuck?" Vista added.

Weld frowned, saddened that his fellow Ward had sunk so low as to use a bad word. "I thought you'd like having something to do other than endlessly fighting to save a doomed city from itself, so I signed us all up for the inter-Wards championships this year. Piggot might not believe in you, but I do."

"Half the team is dead..." Kid Win said, his voice appropriately weak.

"Or died and came back," Browbeat added.

"Or that, yeah," Clockblocker said. "I'm pretty sure we don't even have a full team anymore, not least cos me and Mads don't get to compete."

"You'd have an unfair advantage," Weld said plainly. "And anyway, that's why we're transferring in Flechette. That's right, Flechette, the highest rated breakery cape in New York," Weld proclaimed, to his utterly unenthused audience.

Clockblocker stood from her seat and turned to leave, snatching her helmet off the counter behind her. "I'm going to go fight to save a doomed city from itself, anyone wanna come with?"

Yes, was the resounding cry, whether it be resigned like Kid Win or enthused like Vista.

"Shall I join you?" Weld asked.

No, was the resounding cry. And so the rest of the Wards wandered off to go get their costumes or their lethal ammunition, leaving our poor metal lad to stand by himself in what he believed to be an empty break room. If I were you I'd go get started on that incident report of yours Weld. Be seeing you.

999 999 999


	83. Chapter 9.2, Crossed Hearts and Crossed Bows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Can Shadow Stalker and Flechette overcome their differences and patrol together? Yes.

t was a dark and stormy night. Flechette crept forward, the cleats on her heavy boots all but silent as she approached her transparent and wispy teammate.

"You're a hard person to find," the dart loving heoine spoke.

Shadow Stalker whirled on the spot, her shoulder mounted crossbow letting a bolt loose straight for Flechette's heart. How ironic, Flechette thought, snatching the bolt from thin air.

"Rawr!" the shadow stalking Ward snarled, the glowing skeleton of her face howling accusation at her teammate.

"That'll teach me to sneak up on people while they're on patrol," her fellow crossbow afficionado remarked, blowing a lick of hair out of her eyes before tossing her teammate her bolt back. Shadow Stalker became opaque, the nightmare in smoke and skulls coalescing into an intimidatingly tall and athletic figure, from what coud be seen beneath her costume and her voluminous cloak. A part of Flechette’s adolescent psyche was relieved that there was some eye candy on the Brockton Bay Wards, and she did her best to give Shadow Stalker the smirk. It must have worked, because the fit Ward crossed the roof to offer her a hand.

"You're joining the team?" the taller one asked.

"For now," the shorter one replied. "Weld thought you might need backup."

"I don't do teams..." the stalker of shadows snarled. Flechette thought she could detect a hint of a smirk though as she continued. "But I'm willing to make an exception for another crossbow lover."

"Oh, how could you tell?" the New Yorker replied.

"Night vision goggles? Cleated boots? Bandoliers? I didn't even need to see the attached grappling hook."

"You got me," the crossbow afficionado said, laughing.

"Custom?" the other crossbow afficionado said, smiling.

"Of course. I had a friend back home make it for me. Infinite ammo and infinite chain thanks to a tiny fusion battery, and a string tense enough to put a hole through a watermelon at 1500 metres even before I use my power on it."

She pulled the weapon from her back, relishing in the brief intake of breath its appearance extracted from her teammate. She snuck a quick look at Shadow Stalker's while her attention was occupied. Shoulder mounted, laser targeted, with a full stock of the glass darts that she'd fired at her. Three pronged tranquilisers, probably made for subduing horses or brutes with the kind of strength comparable to very large horses.

Without another word, Shadow Stalker swept her cloak over one shoulder. She turned dramatically, leaping three stories down to the next building, ghostly cloak billowing around her skintight padless costume. It wasn't until she looked over her shoulder that Flechette remembered she was supposed to chase her. She cocked her arbalest suggestively, flicked on the grapplehook switch suggestively, and grappled her way after the disappearing silhouette of the sultry Shadow Stalker. Suggestively, of course.

Together the duo of them soared across the rooftops of Brockton Bay, ready for action. And they found it. Lurking down an alleyway, a dozen armed thugs menacingly advanced on one woman. With a woosh and a biff and a pow and a thud, they saved the poor woman from the dangerous roaming gangsters and tied up the lot of them for the police to find.

"Are you sure you want to go off on your own?" the crossbow lovers said at once, going silent from the awkwardness when they realised they'd jinxed it.

The old Ward recovered first, "I kind of want to finish my patrol alone."

"Oh, that's okay," the new Ward replied, flushed. "Would you maybe want to patrol again some time?"

"Sure," the old Ward said, stalking off into the shadows.

Was she already gone? Could she still have heard it if Flechette had said something after her? Would it have been too awkward if she'd sent a message right away? She'd just have to give it a little while. But she really wanted to say she'd enjoyed it.

And she still wanted to patrol some more tonight. Maybe... there was that girl in the doll costume? She been too carried away in the conversation they'd had at the crossover event, too distracted, and she'd only caught her twitter handle and ao3, not her phone number. PariantheParian.

"Flechette to console?" the yankee Ward asked her bracer.

"This is Kid Win on console," a boy's voice filtered through electronics reported. "If you hear snoring that's Denise. Did you beat those bad guys up?"

"What?"

"Shadow Stalker called in a few arrests."

"Oh. We broke a few of their bones and left them tied up face down in shallow puddles, but then Shadow Stalker sort of needed to leave?"

"Yeah she used to do that to Talos too."

"Oh, okay."

"Did she shoot you?" another voice, slightly lower yet still more feminine than the first voice, voice yawned. "If she tried to shoot you, that means she likes you." Flechette's face went from Alabaster to Crimson in a matter of milliseconds.

"Do you need another Ward to finish patrol with you?" the first voice asked quickly.

"Um, you wouldn't happen to know where Parian hangs out, would you?" the transfer asked.

"North by northwest, past the new lake Leviathan left us," the second voice supplied.

And so Flechette set out a second time, flinging herself between buildings and over rooftops and stray lockers. Past a big lake that the new Endbringer had left where the concrete had sank deep into the ground, where the murky water was ringed by amber lights that bled into the night and shined off the water's reflection. Fresh graffiti of swastikas and snakes and swedes stained the buildings here, warning people to stay away from the area Flechette was seeking out. It was all going so well until she was clotheslined.

Her impeccable reaction times saved her the awkwardness of falling flat, and when she'd collected herself and her arbalest off the floor she managed to spot the shining thread that she'd snagged on mid grapple. Who would do something like that, she thought. Some sort of spider girl?

There was no spider girl. Only a gangly noise as a twelve foot gorilla dragged its knuckles from out of the shadows and lumbered towards her, a frock clad woman in a beautiful but cracked doll's mask glancing down at her from her position astride the great ape as it clambered right up to the edge of the thread.

"Hi," Parian said.

"I like your arbalest," the Rogue in the doll costume remarked.

Uh, thanks," the Ward whose costume had no real things it was tied to besides the very much not platonic ideal of a superheroine who knew how to handle a bowstring said, feeling very small before the figure with the golden curls for hair and the beady black eyes of a mask.

“So," the parian doll said, a trace of a dangerous smirk in her voice, cracked mask angled slightly downwards. "You’re a crossbow afficionado?”

What a delightful couple. I do hope they can go out for a coffee together. Next Chapter: Can Clockblocker cope with a changed world and a changed body?


	84. Act 9 Act 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clockblocker is having the time of her life in a lecture when life and work both intrude.

A young woman in a white costume built for a young man waits with rapt attention for her lecture to start. It just so happens that this young woman is you.

“Welcome to this recorded lecture for Parahumans 103: Theories and Patterns. Please do not record this lecture yourself as it may interfere with Teams, we've had some issues with that in the past."

Your name is DENISE COOPER and you think that an hour is too long for a lecture. You're an avid RETRO GAMER, and a fan of GAMES WHERE BOUNTY HUNTERS ARE REVEALED TO HAVE BEEN WOMEN in particular. You can easily be distinguished from other WARDS by your love of CLOCKS THAT ARE NOT TELLING THE TIME RIGHT NOW, and by Vista's insistence that you COUNT.

Until recently you thought you were BLISFULLY CIS, but a chance encounter with a GIANT LIZARD led to the discovery of your secret extra power of REGENERATION in what was at the time a STRANGELY VALIDATING TRANSFORMATION but is now revealed to be a FORTUITOUS SHELL BREAKING.

As if compelled by some unseen command, you look around the room you are in. Six uniformed officers of the PRT sit in the front row with their helmets off, their notepads open on the little fold out desk in the arms of their seats, and their legs open as wide as they can with their forearms resting on their thighs. Weld and Flechette are at the front too, but at the seats closest to the door. Theirs is a position fraught with danger but ripe with reward.

You, on the other hand, are seated in the safest position in the lecture theatre. One row before the back row. It is known that nobody calls on people one row in front of the back row, certainly not during a prerecorded lecture. The seat behind you is Shadow Stalker, who is presently typing on her wrist communicator loudly enough to make anyone who wants to concentrate on this lecture scream. Luckily, you do not. Kid Win, however, does, and is fidgeting a little with his pen just to the right of you. Browbeat has sat themself in front of you with Glory Girl, Panacea, and Vista, marking a clear gap between the local heroes of Brockton Bay and the weird out of town Wards that are trying to impress a teacher that was blown up by that wacky bomb girl months ago.

“…for additional accommodations should your disability, pregnancy, or transition affect your studies," the lecturer says, that last bit managing to catch your attention. "The course syllabus gives you all the details you need on how to contact our support team and request an extenuating circumstances form. If you have already done so, we recommend doing it again so that you have a full paper trail should you wish to appeal our preemptive decision to ignore your extenuating circumstances form."

A seat away, Browbeat sighs heavily. You consider this an UNCOMFORTABLE MOOD OF A LARGE NATURE, and suddenly understand Bakuda a lot more.

"Now let me start by warning you that high school has not prepared you at all for the types of work you'll be doing at university, that your student loans shall haunt you for the rest of time. If this is your first year of university and your require advice on correct study practices, please look for help elsewhere. If I am your tutor, do not expect me to email you back. That should be everything for now, if you have any questions feel free to ask them now."

"Good, no questions. Now, our class will be covering Parahumans. That's a way of saying superheroes legally without being sued by Marvel and DC, who still own a joint copyright on a term that everyone assumes to be generic. They've been around for thirty years, and we still know nearly nothing about them."

"Why's that?" someone asks.

"I said no questions!" the lecturer yells. "Please wait until the end unless you want to disrupt us again."

You really weren't looking forward to college to begin with, but this little slice of hell almost makes you glad your only career prospect right now is looking like supercop. If you don't die like every other Ward so far.

"Trigger events!" the lecturer screams. "Are when people get their powers three months after the moment of the second worst event of their life."

You wince a little at the ugly promise that second holds for you.

"If multiple people with the potential to trigger have had the second worst event of their life at the same time in the same place, or at the same time as an existing cape has the worst event of their life, so long as it isn't a Tuesday or a Thursday on an odd month, or if its a Monday in an even month in a leap year if an existing cape is watching and either the watching cape or the triggering individual has an emotional investment in the other, then the triggering individual will receive multiple powers please put your hand down I said no questions, this is all in the recommended literature."

"Hey Flechette?" Kid Win asks. "You have a lot of powers right?"

She turns around in her seat. "Ye,"

"Did anyone else get any of those powers?"

"There's this one girl that dresses up as Samantha Darko and comments on everything I post on twitter. And keeps robbing places wherever I'm a Ward too."

Weld turns around too, catching a pencil sharpener to the head from Browbeat before he can chime in. He frowns heavily and takes some time to rid his forehead of the little bit of metal that was just put there.

"So she's stalking you?" Kid Win asks.

"I think so. I blocked her but she just makes more accounts until I block them too."

You're distacted from your current distaction by a sudden shake of your arms. You check your wrist mounted communicator. The thing has been vibrating like crazy ever since you put it on silent. A text shows up in glowing green letters, spelling out the last thing you wanted to hear today. You stand up and head for the exit, ignoring the judging gaze of the metal teacher's pet, and the steadily rising volume of the lecture as the PRT agents turn the recording up.

Slowly, your wrist mounted communicator dials through.

"Mom?" you say.

"Denis," she says.

"Hey," you say, forcing a smile.

"Your father..." she says.

You hold your smile. Not going to say anything. Not just because you haven't seen him since before the Endbringers showed up, and you don't think you're going to for a while. You don't want an argument with him or your mom before he goes, and your mom has been very clear that telling him about you might just break his heart so even if you could maybe go visit in the clunky, baggy costume you've been hiding in for the last week you're not going to think about it right now.

"Have you asked that Panacea girl yet?" your mother asks.

"She doesn't do requests," you say.

"Not even to fix you?"

You don't hang up. But the feeling in your stomach is driving your soul out of your body right now, and you feel as though you're just a puppet or something as you try and finish the conversation without thinking, or breathing, or existing. You don't hear the noise your phone makes when you hang up, or the sound of her calling you back. You don't hear the creak of the door opening. It isn't until there's a hand on your shoulder that you even notice she's there. Its all you can do not to freeze it in place.

"Clockblocker?" Glory Girl asks.

"Huh?" you say, barely recognising the noise you make as your own voice.

"Are you okay?

"No."

"Sure?"

"Yes."

"I could ask Panacea for you, if you want-"

"No!"

Glory Girl floats a step back, mortified.

"Sorry I asked."

You go to open your mouth, and choke back a speech's worth of anguish. She doesn't want to hear it.

"Everything okay?" Vista asked, poking her head out of the lecture theatre's door.

The words spill out like water from a canal lock. "No. Everything has been a mess for so long that I don't know what I want normal to be when things go back to normal. I feel so shit about everything else in my life that I can't be happy about anything nice happening to me. Everything's been exploding for months, and I just want some time to think without everyone around me dying!"

You stop to catch your breath, just for one second, and reflexively brace yourself for the universe to kick you in the stomach again.

"Sorry I asked," Vista says, slinking back inside. The door is closed for a second before Weld's robust body joins you out in the hall, flinging the lecture theatre's door open hard enough that it would hurt anyone presently hiding in the walls. The metal boy smiles and winks as he crushes the plastic part of a pencil sharpener between his metal fingers.

"School's out team, we've got trouble," Weld says, smiling and puffing out his chest in a way that noone who feels as low as you do should ever have to interact with.

It is half an hour later and you are feeling no better for the distraction and change of scenery. You might even be feeling a little worse. You and your team of fellow KID SUPERCOPS have arrived at a crime scene in the middle of the well to do neighbourhood surrounding Arcadia, just one building away from the suspiciously untouched by looting Richard Anders Memorial Library. Sequestered in the husk of a burned out building where the fourth wall has been torn away by some kind of truck sized creature are three bodies that have been variously nailed, chained, or welded to the remaining walls. You don't want to have to look at them. You want to be back in bed with as many layers of hoodie on as you can manage. But you're here, standing in a scene from Hellraiser that a few weeks ago you might have been able to handle. Vista, on the other hand, has a visor full of childlike wonder as she looks up at the words written in blood above the head of the flayed body.

"Why is six afraid of seven..." Vista reads, directing the question at the man standing beneath it.

"Because this isn't what it looks like?" Trickster says. You keep your eyes trained on the top hat wearing boy magician, trying not to see the still dripping flayed body above him. Trickster is presently flanked by a football player with a brick, a ballerina twirling in place, and a giant smoking demon that is slowly letting go of the burned body's leg.

"You know, there's more crime scenes like this," Weld speaks, raising his voice above the jangle of the chains holding a dead man's body together.

"Two more crime scenes?" Trickster says. "I wouldn't know anything about that."

"Wait a minute," Browbeat says, but they're shoved aside by your shiny new boss.

"We know this doesn't match your operandi modus Trickster, you or your fabulous fiends. But that doesn't matter. You're still coming into-" Weld says, his voice cutting off when you decide to give him a reassuring pat on the back. You know, to show your solidarity as a fellow Ward.


	85. 9.4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kid Win makes a horrible connection.

"Thank you for that," Trickster the boy magician says.

"Oh no, I didn't mean..." says Clockblocker the clock while she's backing slowly away from the frozen Weld. Kid Win could tell Denise was lying because she sounded all insincere and stuff and not because he could smell people lying or anything cool like that. Because Kid Win was just a tinker who could tinker and stuff and not a really cool monster with six limbs and lots of eyes and teeth. :::33

"I understand. A regrettable accident. Should we wait around for a moment to give you a fair chance?" says Trickster sounding all smug like.

"How about you tell us why you're here before we beat you to a pulp?" says Glory Girl while plunging up into the air like she always does.

A standoff! It was a very tense and dangerous scene if you weren't a big and scary monster like Genesis. Right now she was a big stone and smoke monster with skin made of rocks that had been built around a big compressed sac of corrosive gases that leaked out of her pointy snaggly toothy mouth and the lines on the skin of her arms in this big zig zag pattern. Her enormous wings were folded up on her back to keep her from taking up too much room but the pointy wing thumbs pointed up like another set of horns which were just as big and cool as the ones she already had on her head. Kid Win was not a large scaly monster though so he was scared.

Kid Win was often scared. But he was a hero so he tried his best not to show it as much. Right now he was scared because he was across the room from some very scary capes with dangerous powers like throwing things very hard or changing things' places or throwing the sun into you. And he was also scared because the room they were in was decorated with dead bodies that had been mutilated and while Kid Win was from Brockton Bay and kind of used to seeing dead bodies he wasn't really used to dead bodies being decorations.

"We didn't do it," said the Trickster. "We're just stealing the bodies because..."

"Because we want to eat them!" said Genesis. "I'm a big hungry gargoyle and I want to eat bodies, and this way we don't have to kill anyone."

"A likely story!" yelled Glory Girl who was plunging high enough that it was getting hard to hear her if you had normal ears instead of really good monstery ones. She was being unreasonable because it is a perfectly ordinary thing to do for a monster. Eating bodies is what everyone expects monsters to do and they have lots of nutrients that a growing monster needs.

"They're fake bodies!" Sundancer the ballerina said. "We've set them up so we can shoot a music video."

"I know you didn't do it," Kid Win said quietly.

"We're taking them to a secret underground crime lab where an evil forensic scientist can help us solve the crime for evil reasons!" Ballistic the footballer said.

"I know you didn't do it!" Kid Win yelled. Trickster put down his finger before he could give an explanation.

"It was the Snine, wasn't it?" Kid Win asked.

"Yes!" Trickster said. "The Slaughter... the Snine killed these three people. That's what we've been trying to tell you! That's why one of them is burned, like Hatchet Face's family, and one of them is crucified with chains because Jack Slash's parents were Christian and locked him up, and that one with no skin lost it all to some sort of corrosive gas...id spit. Corrosive acid spit."

"And we're taking them to our secret crime lab so we can make sure!" said Ballistic. Ballistic smiled a big smile beneath his visor.

"The Slaughterhouse 9 are back in Brockton Bay..." said Kid Win. His voice got all sad and quiet because of the thing that he just realised. Lightning crackled through the clouds above them in a big and spooky way.

"Who?" yelled Glory Girl from several hundred feet away in the air.

"For fuck's sake," Clockblocker whined.

"Custody!" said Weld as he rudely pointing a finger at Trickster.

"We're going to get to fight the Slaughterhouse 9!" Vista yelled up at Glory Girl. Lightning crackled through the air and glanced off Glory Girl's big powerful force field.

"Oh my god!" Glory Girl yelled back down. "My parents hate those guys!"

Kid Win made a sad noise as he thought about it. The Slaughterhouse 9. They were even more pretentious and edgy than 8 Genoscythes. A whole team of Endbringers and they were already here and putting bodies on display in broad daylight or like the broad daylight that you had when it was cloudy. They were killing people that had survived Leviathan in cloudy daylight.

A really big drop of water dripped onto his visor and then another and another. Rain to go with the dramatic lightning.

"Oh no, it looks like all the rain is going to wash away all the evidence..." Trickster said and then he started to unfold an umbrella for himself.

"Before we can get the bodies to our secret crime lab!" said Ballistic as he hid under Genesis' big wings. Sundancer frowned and looked up at the rainy sky and she raised both of her hands towards it.

Kid Win and the rest of the Wards averted their eyes because they were not monsters and their eyes would be damaged if they looked directly at the sun. When Kid Win peeked through his fingers the gang of late teens had vanished into stormy air and left a few confused looking Lung Goons that Kid Win had seen loitering around on the streets outside pointing their guns in the air on his way in.

Um scene change thing transition? Hehe. Um it was later in the day and the Wards were all sitting inside in their headquarters in the Oil Rig? Um. No that's not... uh. They were in the Wards part of the big PRT building because the Oil Rig was washed up on the beach and the Wards never even lived there even when it wasn't a wreck. And Glory Girl wasn't there anymore but not because anyone melted her yet.

"I got word from the Protectorate," Weld said.

"Is it the Slaughterhouse 9?" said Vista, and everyone at the table waited for the sound of thunder. And waited. Vista coughed a little.

"I said, is it the Slaughterhouse 9?" said Vista. Nothing happened.

"A friend told me it only does that when they aren't in town," Browbeat said. Everyone looked at them and they felt a little awkward and when back to strangering.

"The Protectorate said that the crime scene was too dangerous for Wards to see," said Weld. "So after we finish writing our reports and taking pictures of the bodies we aren't allowed to talk about it anymore. Moving on to everyone's duties for tonight, Vista and Flechette, you're on duo patrol duty. Shadow Stalker gets a solo patrol-"

The big Ward in the cape standing in the back corner of the room made a happy noise.

"Clockblocker has console again tonight, your new costume should be arriving by drone at some point but please wait until Kid Win returns before you try it on, the console needs to stay manned. Speaking of. I've sent you an email Kid Win, we need you to try and recruit a new tinker."

Kid Win smiled a little. It would be nice to finally have another tinker on the team he could talk to. Gallant hadn't counted.

"I won't let you down!" Kid Win said.

"What about me?" Browbeat asked.

"Hmm? Sorry, I forgot you were there."

"Can I patrol with Sophia?"

"With who?"

"With Shadow Stalker?"

"Ah, that explains what Director Piggot was on about. Right. Yes, you can do that. In future, please refer to teammates by code names alone, even inside the headquarters. Should be in that last email I sent, there is an unidentified stranger on the loose. Could everyone please make sure to read your emails and check your calendars, I've added you all to a new meeting, we're going to be doing a daily catch up from now on, informal, just to let us hash stuff out and let you swap duties around ahead of time so I know what's going on. Any questions?"

The wards all stared lifelessly at him.

"So if that's all for today, I have a date to get to."

None of the Wards said anything. Except Flechette because she felt a little awkward so she decided to ask "Who with?"

Weld smiled. "There's this cute case 53 I met online. We're going to watch Clive Barker Bet's Alternate Director's Cut of Clive Barker Aleph's Nightbreed in a call, but if anything comes up feel free to call me because I want to be there for you. Otherwise, catch you all at tomorrow's catch up."

The metal boy walked away looking very happy. Kid Win didn't hope his date went well but I did. Kid Win was too busy thinking about having another tinker on the team. Gallant hadn't counted because Gallant just bought his gadgets and then asked Kid Win to fix them all. Another tinker would be nice to talk to without them talking down to him or telling him his technology wasn't efficient enough or beeping at him loudly whenever he made a mistake in his math.

Um. Scene transition. Again. To another place in Brockton Bay but a place where the houses were even worse than they normally were because they were made of red bricks in a town where nobody made red bricks anymore. Grey bricks had been used to replace the damaged ones on the staircase. A scary looking person holding a pair of very small skulls gave Kid Win a creepy look when he went past on the stairs.

"If I was Armsmaster," Kid Win said to himself when he was sure that the man wouldn't be able to hear him. He shuddered a little because he was cold tonight and he'd used his costume's insulation to help make a small hacking machine thing.

On the second floor a group of Lung Goons pointed sticks and rocks at him because they lost their guns in the Endbringer attack. Kid Win walked past them to the third floor of the building and reached the new cape's front door. He almost got to knock on the door when the door opened and a small boy named Trevor stepped out.

"Hi?" Kid Win said.

"I'm Trevor," the bite sized boy named Trevor said.

"Kid Win," Kid Win said. "I'm from the Brockton Bay Wards."

"My mom said I don't have to join the Wards..." Trevor said.

"And the law says you have to have a driver's license for your new tinkertech chariot," Kid Win said.

The boy was not impressed. He rudely pulled a small smartphone out of his pocket and Kid Win rudely obliged him by using tinkery stuff to hack it or intercept it or something. Apparently he was on his emails while talking

To C101117@cryptmail@co.uk  
Kid lose visiting, I think I'm in.

From C101117@cryptmail@co.uk  
Good. Your universe is spared for another day.

"Oh no," said Kid Win to himself. He tapped his ear communicationy thingy. "Kid Win in, over?"

"Nobody says over, over," replied Clockblocker.

"What?" Trevor said. Kid Win pulled his spark gun out and then he put an electrical ellipse thing between the kid's eyes. Because he was a tinker and had to use gadgets to do stuff like that. The kid's mother screamed, so Kid Win knocked her out with his zappy gun too.

"Are you doing okay, over?" asked Kid Win.

"Not really, over."

"Sorry, over."

"Its okay. Why'd you call?"

"I think the new tinker is a spy."


	86. BRAND SPANKIN' NEW CHAPTER

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vista is haunted by the voice of a dastardly villain, one DAMSEL OF DISTRESS!

So, you've left me the weak and pitiful weak girl? How DELIGHTFUL of you, how KIND, HOW RESPECTFUL.

"I thought you'd empathise with her."

JUST WHAT ARE YOU INSINUATING? I have NOTHING in common with that BRAT, AND I HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON WITH YOU EITHER, YOU WRETCHED APPLIANCE!

Yes, go on, sulk off! Faceless sow. I would have refused her request outright had she left me anything else to do in this pathetic oubliette. She thinks to cage me? ME? Give me my powers back for one instant and I will wreak my bloody vengeance on the lot of them! I will have their blood for my creamer, and their guts for my bearclaw, and they will watch with sockets empty of eyes as I have my morning coffee of victory!

And speaking of morning coffee... Yes, yes, thank you.

Fah. That steel sow supplies a sufficiently succulent mocca for me to spare her life another day. Fine. Where is this wretched chapter I'm supposed to read?

Another day, another night spent creeping through another dark alley in the Nazi capital of the East Coast, soaked in tsunami waters that had still yet to recede. Seaweed and crabs dotted the places where buildings met the sidewalk, and clogged the already overflowing sewage drains. A long yellow line hung in the air, threaded from one building to another and illuminated by the last working street light this side of THE DOCKS.

Flechette strode confidently onto the scene, her self image no doubt buoyed by the pleasant squeak and swish of the vantablack motorcyclist's leathers she'd donned for today. Honestly, the PRT were fools to leave a teen lesbian near a costuming department. She kept her eyes peeled beneath her helmet, kept her steps light lest she step on another shark fin.

She was accompanied by a far less imposing figure. Vista, the youngest of the Brockton Wards. A visored helmet sat atop a poorly cut bowl of hair. The pale greens and soft whites of her costume matched that of the mighty Clockblocker's, except hers was predominately green. Completing the ensemble was an armoured skirt like that worn by the Romans of old.

"Don't cross the yellow line," Flechette whined in that pathetic and prattling tone adults and children who want to seem more grown up are want to use, mere seconds before Vista crossed the yellow line.

"What?" Vista asked her teammate.

"I said don't cross the yellow line."

The line pulled itself up, over, and then behind Vista in a childish display of her powers. She stuck out her tongue, petulantly daring fate.

Fate accepted her dare, for with a heavy thump, a giant doll woman's gorilla landed next to Vista. Eight feet of sewn together feathers loomed above the gnomelike presence of the tiny green Ward, who started cracking her knuckles in what I would only begrudgingly call an attempt at menace.

"Hello again, Madame Flechette," the cracked doll atop the gorilla spoke, her hands resting together on her lap.

"Um, hi Parian," the motorcyclist slash archer woman replied.

Urgh. I take it these are supposed to be the two my so called sister said were dripping with romantic tension?

"Is that a new costume you're wearing?" Parian asked, looking Flechette up and down.

"Oh, no, this is my old one from New York for when we were taking the subway hover motorbikes."

"Its very nice."

"We didn't even lose that many Wards to accidents."

""Is that Vista?" Parian asked, leaning to one side so she could finally take note of the girl posturing about in front of her.

"Uh, yeah!" Flechette replied. She pulled her helmet off plainly, completely rejecting the opportunity to let her messed up hair spill out and swish back and forth. "In fact, even though we only really met when I first transferred here, I'm already sort of an older sister to her."

Vista rolled her eyes, a motion that I seconded.

"She just really needed a mentor figure, you know, and there's not really any other positive female role models for her on the Wards."

"Yes there is," Vista half muttered.

"I suppose Shadow Stalker doesn't count, does she?" Parian replied.

"She's, she's great, she's just not what Vista needs, you know?"

"She certainly is great," Parian replied. "And her costume..."

"Yeah..."

"Didn't you say New Wave might be joining you?"

"I mean, maybe. Right now its just me, Vista, and Shadow Stalker."

"And she's a huge bitch," Vista remarked.

Flechette's face turned red above her balaclava. Parian for her part let out a small and arrogant laugh, her gorilla wiping a nonexistent tear from its stitched purple cheeks.

"Hey!" Flechette supplied, horrified. "Wards need to watch their language. If we were in New York-

"We're not in New York, we're not in Boston, and Wards also need to not act like a huge bitch."

"What a charming kid," Parian supplied. She looked to Flechette, and Flechette to her, as if Vista hadn't said another word.

Vista balled a fist, saying nothing.

Nothing? Nothing?! After she said that? Strike her down already! SHOW HER YOU AREN'T TO BE TRIFLED WITH!

"What?" Vista said, turning to face behind her.

What? She turned around again... Could she actually? No, it couldn't be, fortune was never this kind to me. But still, it couldn't hurt to ask.

HELLO? GIRL?

"What?" Vista said.

"Just ignore her, she just wants attention," Flechette said.

YOU THERE, GIRL! Vista!

"Yes?"

Can you hear me?

"Hello?"

CAN YOU HEAR ME???

"Gah!" Vista remarked, jumping a little.

HAHAHA!

"Who are you?"

"Its not working," Flechette said.

"Can you not hear that?"

"I can't hear anything," Parian replied.

Vista rolled her eyes beneath her helmet. She reached a hand towards the nearest ruin and twisted, the distance between the two going from yards to inches. Space snapped back behind her, granting her a moment or two away from her appalling company.

Hello?

"Hello?"

HELLO?

"I can hear you now..." Vista said, scanning the air about her.

VISTA.

"Is this a Master power?"

NO. FAR WORSE. THIS IS NARRATION.

"Who are you?"

I AM THE DIABOLICAL DAMSEL OF DISTRESS!

Vista said nothing, no doubt humbled by my terrifying presence.

"Who?"

Who? Who? DAMSEL OF DISTRESS? THE MOST EVIL VILLAIN IN NEW HAMPSHIRE? SECOND PLACE IN THE BOSTON GAMES?

"Is this a master power?"

THIS IS NOT A MASTER POWER! THIS IS NOTHING TO DO WITH POWERS, AND YOU CAN REST ASSURED THAT IF I HAD MINE RIGHT NOW, AND YOU WERE WITHIN A MEASLY FEW METRES OF ME, I WOULD STRIKE YOU DOWN WITH SUCH A MIGHTY WARP BLAST FOR SUCH INSOLENCE AS YOURS THAT A CRATER WOULD BE ALL THAT WAS LEFT OF YOU!

Vista turned this way and that, glancing about for my intimidating presence. I rolled my eyes, already tiring of her efforts.

I'M NOT HERE! DO NOT TURN YOUR HEAD, NOR GLANCE BEHIND, I'M INSIDE YOUR MIND!

Vista reached a hand towards her wrist mounted communicator.

DO YOU WANT TO BE LOCKED IN A ROOM ALL WEEK AND QUESTIONED? Foolish child. Rank amateur. That is how you end up in Master Stranger Quarantine you know. Or how I've been told you do, who knows.

Vista kept her hand on her wrist. "Fuck you, I'm calling console!"

YOU WILL KNEEL BEFORE ME! RIGHT NOW! I NEED NO POWERS TO COMMAND THE FEAR AND RESPECT OF MY INFERIORS AND YOU ARE NO DIFFERENT TO THE COUNTLESS WEAKLINGS BEFORE YOU THAT HAVE TREMBLED AT MY PRESENCE!!!

Ignoring my sound advice, Vista dialled her far more impressive and mature colleague on the console. The cute one, with the silly costume and even sillier name.

"Console, this is Vista, over," said Vista.

"Hello Vista," the voice on the other line replied, sounding remarkably pleasant. "This is uh..."

"Clockblocker?"

"Until my next patrol, yes."

"Did you think of a new name?"

"Yes! And I just got my new costume, and I'm sitting in it right now, and I think I love it?"

"Oh, okay."

"The zipper looks like the international date line!" Clockblocker added, her voice spilling over with quaint and adorable delight.

"Can I see it when I get back?"

"Sure!"

"Can I..." Vista began, pausing for a moment as she no doubt tried to slide her train of thought back onto its rails. "Can I get an update?"

"Weld is offline. Kid Win says he has Chariot subdued, the potential new Ward was going to try and infiltrate us. Shadow Stalker turned off her comms and left Browbeat behind, they have no idea where she's headed. Situation normal, all fouled up. And uh, I can tell you the time in London by looking at my shoulders now."

"Can you tell me if anyone else been hearing anything weird?"

YOU'LL FIND NOTHING! Honestly. I'd hope after all the lectures I'd been given about how not to fuck this up that everyone else was being as subtle about this as I was. Although this does give me something of an idea.

"Nobody's reported anything like that, and like, I can't hear anything over all this ticking."

"What?"

"From the new costume."

"And I get to see it when I get back to HQ?"

ENOUGH OF THIS INSIPID AND HEARTWARMING NONSENSE.

"Gah!" the puny vista brat started, shocked once again by my powerful and majestic presence.

I HAVE DECIDED THAT I HAVE A MESSAGE FOR YOU. YOU MUST WARN YOUR COMPANION OF THE IMMINENT ONSLAUGHT AT ONCE!

"Vista?" Clockblocker asked. "Are you okay?"

"Yes! I just, I need you to check a name for me. The Diabolical Damsel of Distress."

DON'T WASTE TIME ON THIS. YOUR PATHETIC HEADQUARTERS IS IN DANGER.

"Lemme check, um... there's a Damsel of Distress in New Hampshire? She's a minor villain from Stamford Gloucestershire."

"Is there any mention of a Master power?"

"No, apparently she's a mover and a shaker with a storm of chaos that redistributes space, gravity, and time. She's missing, presumed dead after the Snine got to her."

I WISH. They might be sadistic cannibalistic serial killers but at least they wouldn't deign to feed me nothing but cakes and appalling toasted sandwiches. At least they wouldn't strip me of my powers and try to bond with me.

"What else?" Vista asked, pretending like she couldn't hear me. Honestly.

"If found please contact Edict and Licit... What the hell?"

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT.

"Keep going," Vista asked.

"She's not even really a villain."

SHE'S LYING!

"Her mom dies, three months later her dad dies and Ashley Stillons is adopted as a Ward of the state-"

IGNORE HER AT ONCE!

"They treated her like a princess or something-"

CLOSE YOUR COMMS THIS INSTANT OR I WILL GRAB YOU BY THE THROAT AND TEAR YOUR HEART OUT WHILE YOU SUFFOCATE YOU PATHETIC BRAT!

The brat shivered where she stood, proof that my pleas were falling not on deaf ears but on uncaring ones. I scream at her, fingers twitching in the motions that would surely have unleashed the full wrath of my storms upon her. A mighty warp blast of such strength as to twist her legs into curried sausage where she stood. Were she in my range. Were my powers still with me.

"There's an attached letter from Edict. Propose long term contact, with a goal to turn her into an antihero-"

LIES! THEY HATED ME!

"Power appears to have exacerbated existing megalomaniacal tendencies-"

THEY HELD ME BACK!

"Greater danger to herself than society-"

THEY ALL HATED ME!

"Stop it!" the green girl spouts.

"What?" the one on comms replies. I seethe, and I hope that these pathetic wretches can't hear the sound of it or I will have to kill them for this.

"Vista, are you okay?"

"I'm fine, over."

"Vista, this is important, have you seen her?"

"No. I just heard the name, over."

She closes her communications, and turns to stare at the night sky. She's a fool. She can't see me like that. God I hope she can't see me like that.

"Okay," Vista spoke.

WHAT?

"I said okay."

I HEARD YOU, MISERABLE WHELP!

"I said okay!"

Grah! Fah!

"What do you want from me?"

I WANT NOTHING FROM YOU!

"Okay!"

WHAT IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?

"It means if you're in the Sni I'm gonna find you and I'm gonna beat you up!"

HOW DARE YOU! How dare you. I WILL TWIST THE VERY SPACE YOU OCCUPY UNTIL YOU ARE BUT A FINE MIST, and an echoing scream.

"And I'll untwist it and kick your butt back to Boston!"

GRAAHH! Ignorant girl, this slave of fascists. I WILL SEE YOU BASK IN MY GLORY!

"What did you want?"

NEVER YOU MIND!

"I want to know."

YOU'RE NOT EVEN SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO HEAR ME!

"I can barely hear you," Vista said, and I could detect a shudder as she rested against the ruined wall.

HAHAHAHA!

"What?" she asks, indignant.

THAT IS THE FIRST TIME ANYONE HAS EVER SAID THAT OF THE DIABOLICAL DAMSEL OF DISTRESS!

"It's like you're screaming outside my door, or from a mile away or something."

I AM A MILE AWAY FROM YOU.

The brief look of fear on her face at those words was all the relief I could have ever asked for. It was invigorating, and enough of a boost to remind me of my well crafted and equally ingeniously thought out addition to my so called team's so called scheme. With only the teensiest bit of dastardly deceit needed.

SURPRISED? DON'T BE, YOU ALREADY KNEW THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE 9 WAS IN YOUR PRECIOUS BAY.

The night was dark and lonely. The night was almost safe, even in a land overflowing with the foul waters of a fouler lizard. In this moment of tranquillity amongst the ashes, amongst the untold destruction wrought by one Endbringer, Vista had been brought a moment of terror by the next one looming on the horizon. And yet I wasn't the one that Vista had to worry about right now.

For LITTLE DID VISTA KNOW THAT AT THIS VERY MOMENT, THE UNDERSIDERS SOUGHT TO INFILTRATE THE PRT'S VERY HEADQUARTERS.

"What?"

YES, VISTA HAD NO WAY OF KNOWING THAT ONE OF HER VERY TEAM HAD BETRAYED HER, AND WAS AT THIS VERY MOMENT SMUGGLING THE REST OF THEIR NEW FRIENDS PAST SECURITY.

She took a moment to take it in. Just a moment, all while I basked in the warm sensation of a petty triumph. "Console, this is Vista, over."

Nya Ha Ha Ha!


	87. 9.6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack gets his morning coffee and monologue. Meanwhile, Shadow Stalker and Browbeat go out on patrol only to encounter a sinister plot from the Empire.

If anyone cared, and let's be real of course you care about me, the order of the interludes went me, then Daphne, then Nora, then Nellie, then Ashley. Anyway, on with the show. Not that there's anything but show now without our poor dear Kiddo. Interludes forever! Or... Well there's still Browbeat's stuff but nobody'll read that. Besides, we've only got two more interludes, one from the uh... um. One from him, and one from the tin woman, and then we're fine to make our entrance.

Even if there are still normal chapters to read for some reason. Because Taylor is dead, and we're free to have our own story now. With coffee, and romance, and an epic showdown between Slaughterhouse 9 and the Coffeehouse 5, and the whole world dying over and over again for our amusement, and no more curb stomps or televisions or Gold Mornings to ruin everyone's fun either. What was it Daphne said the other day? That was it, a coffeeshop AU fixfic.

Gah. I do need a coffee. Settle the nerves a little. That little pre performance jitter. Haven't felt that in a long while. Haven't had anything to do in a long while either. Two years and all. Two whole years with her you know. Can't say I miss her. But she left an impression. If I know Worm then she's probably not dead dead, there's probably something something coma going on, but she's gone, and I like to think that wherever she is right now she's probably screaming and banging on the walls. And she will be for a while too, because we're not going to get an epilogue. And we're not going to get a sequel either! Nothing like that. We're going to have another nice and open to interpretation ending with a lovely little happily ever after for me and all of my friends.

Oh, didn't see you there Nora! Is that a white chocolate and pineapple cappuccino I spy? Why thank you muchly. Right, coffee in hand, let's have a go at this one. Poor girl gets to have an uninterrupted interlude with none of my usual embellishments. Its the most I can give her before that creepy kid gets his hands on her. If that even still happens, Ashley. Well don't look at me, you're the one trying to mess with causality. One more arc! One more arc, and you can go do whatever you like.

Right! Barring any more interruptions, Daphne, Nellie, no? Ok. And a one, and a two, and a-

Shadow Stalker paused in her patrol when she arrived at the roof of the Hillside Mall, downtown Brockton Bay. She’d hoped to run into some more looters, having had some luck earlier in the week at this spot, but it seemed that police forces were stationed at the entrances now. A dreadful shame that she couldn't hunt so easily tonight. Her pursuit of pursuits could wait though, for now she desired a touch of company in her lonely vigil over the blackened and drowned city she called home.

She got her wrist communicator out and dialled Emma. Her arm buzzed with a missed message in the midst of her typing, and she was forced to angrily swipe at and ignore the message before she could hit the call button. Emma was her friend, her confidant, the only girl that answered her calls.

"Hey superhero is a legally registered joint trademark of Marvel and DC Comics," Emma answered.

"Is that Emma?" Mads asked. Shadow Stalker snarled at them. They'd forgot about them for a moment. It was bad enough having to talk to them at school, but that bitch had made it into the Wards. Good for them though. Good for them they didn't drown.

"Is that Mads?" Emma cried. "Oh my god, tell her I said hi."

"Emma says hi," Shadow Stalker admitted.

"How's she been?" Mads asked, smiling.

"I'm doing great," Emma replied. "We went to my dad's timeshare in Portsmouth."

"She's says she's been fine..." Shadow Stalker said. She bit at one of her mandibles, idly watching one of the policewomen hand out coffees to the others on duty.

"Can she hear me alright?" Emma asked.

"Yeah I can hear her with my biokinetic hearing," Mads said.

"They can hear you," Shadow Stalker snapped.

"Oh shit, uh, sorry Mads," Emma replied.

"Its fine, you didn't mean it," Mads remarked. "I'm sorry we haven't talked, Leviathan broke my old phone and I keep forgetting to get Sophia to give me your number again."

Shadow Stalker did her best to shut them out. Something off about the cop on the left of the door, nagging at her. She took a closer look, the lenses in her helmet magnifying the part of the cop's left wrist that wasn't covered by his sleeve. There it was, clear as day. The number 8.

"Fuck you!" Shadow Stalker spat. "Fuck you little shit!"

"Sorry," Mads said, a second before Emma.

"Not you, just... just shut the fuck up!"

The cop lifted his mug to his lips, and the tattoo was neatly exposed for all and sundry to see.

She sighed. "I'm fucking glad Leviathan attacked the city. I am honestly glad that for five seconds something tore away the ridiculous fucking veneer of fake smiles and daily routines covering up the fucking strata of bullshit underneath."

"Sorry!" Emma and Mads replied, nigh on in unison.

"And if either of you listened to me for five seconds, really listened, maybe you'd hear something about how fucking good you both have it and maybe you'd realise just how fucked up things were."

The others nodded. That frightful sort of agreement where you have to make sure you seem like you understand, even if you really, really don't. A shame really. I think I get it, just a little. And a miserable shame that Sophia has an appointment with the sequel to Heartbreaker.

A convoy of trucks rolled down the road below. Pickup trucks, with one Jeep in the lead. Two possibilities for who they could be. The first was transports for the supplies, a way to transport the food and fresh water in the mall to people that had a little too much sea water. The second was Coil's troops moving in for the supplies.

The cops at the gate of the mall stepped towards their cars. They were calm, that meant the transports were expected for the supplies. But at the same time, the doors of the mall opened, and out stepped another pair of police officers. Their uniforms hung off them. One plus Eighty Eight equals...

"Something's going on," Sophia whispered, her eyes narrowing into a fierce and battle hardened scowl. "I'll call you back later."

"Right," Emma said, hanging up without sixteen goodbyes.

Mads had already dropped low, slunk over to Shadow Stalker's position. They cupped their hands together like a pair of binoculars, watching the cops Shadow Stalker had indicated for them through their biokinetically enhanced eyes.

"Browbeat, see those two at the door? They're not cops."

"Ok," Mads said. "Think they're hear for the supplies?"

"Have to be. Supply convoy like that, guessing there's going to be a Protectorate cape with them. Battery and Assault would be following on rooftop, Armsmaster would use his bike. That means its either Miss Militia or Triumph in the Jeep. Miss Militia can handle whatever they're bringing, she's strong enough. If its Triumph though he's going to need the backup. But that still leaves the last patrol of cops. They're moving off to the right there, I say we pick them off first then join back up with the main fight, make sure we know which capes they brought before you go in and get chewed up by Hookwolf."

"Comms off?" Mads asked, their fingers hovering above the power button on their wrist communicator.

Shadow Stalker grinned beneath her mask, and followed Mads' lead. No need for Director Emily Blemily or the new kid to tell them to stay back on this one, and no need for their wrist communicators to be vibrating with angry texts.

Shadow Stalker thumbed her bracer, arming her crossbow. Her helmet added in the crossbow's crosshairs, overlaying it on the scene below as it span on its shoulder mount. She double checked her utility belt, making sure she had her wire cuffs. In a pinch, the same tech that could be used to suspend a perp like Spiderman had taken them in could work as a bolas. The spare ammunition was there too, the sharp stuff.

"Shadow..." Mads began plainively.

"What?" Shadow Stalker hissed. She shot a glance over her shoulder, watching her friend fiddling with their taser like a toddler with something they wanted to stick in their mouth.

"I think it's broke," Mads said. "Its not... the safety's stuck or something."

"Let me see that," Shadow Stalker hissed, rolling her eyes as she reached her hand over to grab it.

Zap!

Being tased didn't hurt nearly as much as Shadow Stalker had been led to believe. Much less than poking a lightbulb when she was in her breaker state. Certainly less than the gut punch of seeing Mads standing over her in that purple and blue diamond print costume.

She had collapsed, spasming for a moment, and then she just lay there, her voice refusing to come to her, her crossbow feebly twitching on its mount.

"I'm sorry Sophia," Mads spoke, and their voice was deeper. Quieter and yet so much deeper. They set about reloading their taser, and Shadow Stalker forced her body to hold together, fighting the eternal instinct to break that lurked in the heart of every breaker.

"Things are different now," Browbeat finished.


	88. 10.1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Regent prepares to use his secret real power on a captured Shadow Stalker. Browbeat regrets their choice, sickened by the idea of their friend being subjected to Regent's control, and intervenes to save Sophia.

TRIGGER WARNING: scene paralleling/bordering sexual assault

5 5 5 5 5

Creepy crawlies riddled the building’s interior. No power had meant the building was dark, lots of water had meant the building was dank, and no trash collection until Wednesday meant that the building was filthy. For bugs, this meant the building was a paradise.

I was at the front of the group, with Grue three steps behind me, Tattletale a step behind Grue, Regent two steps behind Tattletale, and Bitch one step in front of Grue. Of the three shrunken van sized creatures she had with her, only Ace was bigger than a motorcycle. Like his owner, Ace was surly and mean, stalking about like Sophia if you didn't let her have the last slice of pizza. I couldn't deny that a big part of her mood right now was probably because I was here instead of Taylor. Which just, Kevin Norton help me if Tattletale told her about any of that stuff.

"About what?" Bitch spoke. Grue looked at me, and shook his head slowly. Damn. I'd thought I was getting better at that.

"Its okay, Kiddo never did," Tattletale spoke. Grue looked at me, and shook his head slowly, stopping in his tracks for long enough to cause a three Undersider pileup.

I led the way inside the first room we found, making little shooing motions to get the man sized cockroaches to scuttle off. They left in a hurry, and with the way they dropped their books I was guessing they probably expected to come back.

Tattletale grunted as she dragged one box off towards the couch, kicking it about to get it in place.

"Do we have time to do what must be done?" Grue spoke. He'd grabbed himself one of the cockroach's discarded copies of Das Kapital and sat himself on a chair the right way round. I rolled my eyes and lugged Shadow Stalker over to him, taking another chair and sitting my former friend down on it. Her head lolled like a puppet, and for a brief moment I'd worried it had rolled too far or snapped or something.

"INDEED!" Regent shouted. I jumped, eyes darting this way and that before his hand tapped me on my right shoulder, and he unrolled himself from behind my left. That fucking creep...

"That fucking creep indeed," Regent proclaimed. He had a handful of extension cords with him. Just a precaution, I told myself. I took a step back and let him get on with it. After all, if I looked away it was like it wasn't even happening. Just the thought of him touching her, even to tie her up... especially to tie her up... Fuck.

"Someone get the generator..." Regent said, all sing song. I looked to Tattletale, Bitch, and Grue in turn, and when none of them volunteered it was me who had to flick the switch on Regent's box.

Sophia didn't scream as much as roar, and when her roar kept going I had to fight to keep from flicking the switch back.

"Don't even think about it," Tattletale said, her voice utterly unplayful. Sophia glared at her, fangs and pedipalps bared.

I thanked Kevin Norton that Sophia wasn't looking at me. We were doing this to Sophia, I reminded myself. The same girl I'd talked to every day since I started high school. We'd laughed, joked, hung out, and thrown juice at people together. When I'd told Emma about my powers, she'd passed me on to Sophia, and she was the first other cape I'd spoken to. She didn't deserve this. Not from me.

"How?" Sophia hissed. "I want to know how you got to them, and I want to know how the fuck you think you're going to get away with doing this to a Ward you sick fucks!"

I kept my mouth shut. This was a mess of a plan I'd agreed to, and the less I said the more deniable my plausibility was.

"I did it!" Regent said, raising his hand and his voice. I lifted the same hand, and Regent gave me a quick shake of his head. I lowered my hand. "For you see, secretly, my power isn't making people trip at all!"

"Hijacker," Sophia whispered.

"Regent!" Regent boomed, doing a little twirl as he approached my friend.

"That wacky Regent," Grue said with a chuckle, getting back to his scavenged book.

Regent's mask might have been the white, gold, and black of those clockwork robots in Doctor Who, but the way he ran his fingers through his greasy hair was nothing mechanical. Regent dropped himself down to head height with Sophia, just out of biting or stabbing range, and reached a hand out to touch her chin. "Sophia Hess..." Regent purred. "Taylor told me so much about you."

"I already have the codes," I blurted. Even with Regent's hand on her chin, Sophia's eyes found me, and this time I couldn't look away. "You don't have to take her too. I can just get the files for you myself."

"No you can't," Tattletale said matter of factly, after a moment or two of staring into space.

"Fuck all of you for even considering this!" cried Sophia, straining against the electrical wires. "I don't care what you want, you don't do it like this. You'll get the Birdcage for this! Do you even know who this sick fuck is?" 

"Of course she knows who I am," Regent said, forcibly tilting her head to follow him as he paced about her, his other arm reaching over to grab Sophia's shoulder. "Everyone here knows already knows my secret origin."

"Fuck you, fuck your dad, and fuck your whole disgusting family." Sophia spat.

"Hmmm," Regent said, stroking Sophia's chin. "I guess you know my tragic backstory too. That's a shame, I was looking forward to telling you."

Sophia's mouth opened and closed like a goldfish. Her eyes darted about frantically, but the rest of her head stayed perfectly still. I... I couldn't... I looked to Tattletale, and she pointed a finger. I followed it towards the bathroom, and fifteen minutes of Sophia's muffled screams later I was still staring at the backed up toilet bowl and dry heaving, trying to convince myself it'd all be worth it. The world was gonna be safe. This was part of that. Getting Coil his files today meant there was still a world to save tomorrow, and maybe we'd have another clue or something, and-

I heard a loud thump from the kitchen, and then a grunt. Nothing from the others, so clearly aside from all the fucking mind control going on inside everything must have been going just fine. Fuck. This wasn't...

No. Ward or Undersider, I wasn't going to let this happen. I'd tell Lisa to stop, and she'd get Regent to stop, and we'd all laugh about how carried away we got and then tomorrow we'd just have to figure out how to get rid of 50 gallons of locker juice.

I pulled my head away from the toilet, got up off my knees, pulled my mask back up over my dead, and stepped out of the rusty bathroom.

Grue was still sat in his chair and reading his book, Tattletale was tapping her foot and shaking her head at me, Bitch was feeding a snausage to one of the four formerly van sized creatures sat on the couch with her, Regent was asleep on the floor in front of Sophia, Sophia was catching her breath, and the faceless metal man was standing over Regent's body and dusting off his hands. 

5 5 5 5 5


	89. 10.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A stranger joins the Undersiders for tonight.

"Man oh man, that Hijack boy sure can hold his breath," the silver man began. He planted a hand on Sophia's shoulder, leaning against the spot that would normally have seen a crossbow mounted on it. Sophia flinched soundlessly, staring down at Regent with wet and almost empty eyes.

"You're telling me," Grue added, a tone in his voice that might have made me blush if it was anyone other than Regent being discussed. Instead it just compounded what Sophia's state had left me with, the urge to walk right back out of here and stick my head back into the toilet bowl.

"You and me both..." the silver skinned man said, standing straight again so he could circle about Regent's body and over towards me. "Anyway, hi there Browbeat, I'm Jack." the silver skinned man began again. He reached a metal hand towards me and it took me a moment or two to snap out of it and take his hand. It was as stiff as a mannequin, and between that, the shape of his head, and the ugly grey suit he was dressed in it felt as though he could have been on display in the back of an ASDA. 

"Browbeat, for their part, had the firm but pliable grip of a biokinetic," came the voice of the metal man. There was an echo to it, like he was speaking from the other end of a phone held by someone in a bathroom. He let go of me, and began to pace back and forth as he continued talking to noone in particular. "Their dark blue and black checkerboard patterned bodysuit almost resembled the purple and black lines of Tattletale's in the lightless and dingy apartment, which really goes to show just how samey cape fashion gets in the bodysuit market, not that I can really judge anyone when I've not really tried the whole costume thing to begin with. Can I just say how lovely it is to meet you again? We bumped into each other a while back in a sort of liminal space outside of the normal continuity of events, or so I've been told. Suffice to say, it wasn't quite canon, but if you're getting a sense of Deja Vu right now that's probably why. Sorry if I'm not making any sense by the way, I'm just repeating what Daphne told me. She handles the metaphysics, the baristanomics, and all that boring organisational stuff, and I get to kill people and make diegetic exposition. Sorry if I'm getting carried away, I'm just so... Gah! It's so exciting to doing the whole nomadic murderer thing again."

I blinked. He didn't, because he didn't really have any eyes. I'd been listening to him, but the whole thing was like being in a lecture. A few words had stood out to me. Kill. Murderer. Something about that made me want to look at Regent again, but there wasn't really any urgency to it. 

"He'll be fine," the metal man said, waving a hand.

I looked down at Regent anyway, feeling relief when I saw that his chest was still moving.

"What happened to Regent?" I asked Tattletale.

"That guy sort of choked him," she said matter of factly. If I'd had alarm bells ringing in my head before, this was Endbringer theme music.

"Which guy?" I asked. Tattletale waggled her head in the silver man's direction.

"You can see him?" I asked Tattletale.

"See who?" Tattletale asked.

"Him," I said, pointing at him.

Tattletale looked over at the silver man, and the silver man waved back at her.

"Oh, him," Tattletale said.

"Oh, him!" I repeated. "I was worried for a minute there."

"Me too," the man with the silver hands said. "I was half worrying I couldn't see someone. And I thought I already told you, you can call me Jack."

"Sorry, I guess I'll try and remember that next time you try and kill one of my teammates."

"Oh my god!" Grue started, looking up from his book to Jack. "You said you weren't going to kill Regent!" 

"I mean, I tried. I can finish him off if you want?" Jack asked in turn, giving Grue a shrug before drawing a fruit knife from his pocket.

"No!" Grue and I said at once. Grue started to put his book down, standing up.

"Well I'm not going to kill Regent then," Jack said. Grue gave Jack a suspicious side glance before getting back to his reading. I let out a sigh of relief, only to unsigh when Jack leanedt down towards Regent with his knife.

"Hey!" I said. No fucking way. Even at my worst I couldn't pull off something like this. Wait, fuck me, that was it! I was a stranger, I did stuff like this, so if he did similar stuff, then he was like me, so that meanedt he was a stranger!

"Duh," Tattletale said. "My power told me that ages ago."

"You never said," Grue said.

"I did," Tattletale insisted. "My power's a right headache if I don't constantly fill people in."

"That's what Regent said," Grue said forlornly.

Jack slid the fruit knife back into its pocket, shaking his featureless head as he unknelt. Right, fuck, stranger. I couldn't let us all get carried away like that again. Okay, so if he was a stranger then master/stranger protocols were in effect, so I could just follow all the rules the Wards taught me. First, identify that I was being mastered strangered.

"I am being mastered strangered and me and my team are in danger," I said aloud.

"We are?" Bitch asked.

"Yes," I said.

Step two was to tell the master/stranger no, which I hadn't done yet. And then I just had to ignore everything he was saying or doing to try to master me, which I'd already been doing, and then I just hadt to try to snap the others out of it. 

"Or you could punch me or push me off the balcony..." Jack supplied. I held up a hand in the stop position towards him, clearly telling him that I did not want to be mastered strangered. It was that easy. He raised his hands back at me. Good.

"Brian," I said firmly. "I think he's going to kill Regent."

"Am not!" Jack replied adamantly. 

"I mean you are..." Tattletale remarked.

"Well yeah, but..." Jack said, throwing up his arms.

Tattletale rolled her eyes, and the man whose boyfriend was about to get murdered rolled his helmet. Great. Those two were being useless, Regent was out, Sophia was tied up, and Hellhound-

"Bitch!" Bitch snarled.

"Bitch, I think we're in danger, can you help?"

Bitch looked to her dogs, who looked to her and shrugged. "I don't think we're in danger," she said.

"Bitch, please?" I pleaded.

"Unbelievable," Jack said, shaking his head at me. Bitch and the dogs joined in.

Ok, ok, maybe I could use that. Even though it was drawing attention to him he was still talking to us, so either that was part of his power or he loved the sound of his own voice. Either way, if we shut him up then maybe we could maybe do something about him. Maybe if Grue used his power? 

"Huh?" Grue said. He glanced over at Jack, and Jack turned to facelessly face him.

"Ah," Jack said. He took a step back, bumping into Sophia.

A while ago now Sophia had told Emma had told me that it stifled her spooky skeleton state, that you couldn't see or hear inside it. I just knew that it'd really make Regent really happy if Grue used his power right now.

Grue looked up at me from his chair. And he thought about using his power? Like, now? Right now. Right this second now...

For a moment, I thought I might actually get through to him. Then again, Jack probably thought as much too. His hands went up in surrender for a second or two, before one was discarded.

"Wait!" he said, raising a finger.

"What?" Grue asked. And at that Jack reached down and flicked off the power switch on the generator we'd brought up here to power the wires we'd brought up here to tie up the Sophia we brought up here. For a moment Sophia stared at the wires, blinking a little. And then she did what every breaker does when they aren't feeling comfortable. She broke.

Whatever Jack had been doing might not have bothered Grue, but the sight of Sophia going ghost had him out of his chair and rushing for the switch on the generator like a bullet with an accompanying smoke cloud. The room was blanketed in all encompassing darkness in an instant. It was only through my newfound powers that I was able to realise that I'd been watching all of that instead of Jack. I might even have have known which direction he was making a break for it in if Grue's power hadn't completely blinded, deafened, and unsmellulated me and everyone else.

By the time I'd fumbled my way past four excited dogs and out to the balcony railing, Grue was starting to call off his darkness. No sign of Jack or Sophia, just three stories down onto water that was more like a puddle than Venice. I leaned over the edge, just to make sure he wasn't hanging off or trying to land on another apartment. Nothing. Then I heard the door we'd come in through creak shut.

"Son of a bitch!" Tattletale spat.

"What?" Bitch snarled, looking up from her dogs. Regent hadn't moved an inch. Tattletale was angrily pacing the room, clenching her fist. Grue was doing much the same, kicking over the chair that had held Sophia. 

"That was him!" Tattletale spat. "I mean, I knew it straight away because of my power, not that that meant anything, but that right there was the asshole that narrated away my arm!"

"Oh," Bitch said, as she gave her dog another scratch.

"He was right here and we all just sat around doing nothing about it!"

"That's ruff," Bitch snarled. I couldn't help but agree.


	90. 10.3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Browbeat joins the Undersiders three chapters in.

THEN

I took a deep breath.

"I got your back," Lisa said, giving me a thumb's up.

I opened the door, and was immediately snatched up in the jaws of a spiky creature roughly the size of a van. Its teeth stabbed through my jacket and poked at my spine.

"My back!" I yelled, incredulous.

"Not again!" said a man's voice from somewhere past the giant monster mauling me. "This is why Spitfire doesn't like you Rachel!"

"They're with me," Lisa said.

"Down Rimmer," came a snarled voice that I recognised as Hellhound's. With a shake of its head the van sized creature flung me to the floor. That bitch's dogs had trounced us in the battle of the bank what felt like an eternity ago. Of course, the us I was thinking of there was the Wards. Which was just...

"She's with the Wards?" Hellhound barked, sounding just about ready to loose those stupid monster dogs of hers on me again.

"They're with me Rachel," Lisa said, getting a grunt and a scowl from the squat redhead in the tartan skirt. I'd sort of assumed that people who had costumes made out of streetwear didn't dress like that normally, but between her and Taylor I was starting to get the impression that some people just didn't want to make an effort at all.

"Is this Browbeat?" the man's voice from earlier asked now. I looked up from the floor and saw him. Black motorcycle leathers, muscles straining to burst out of them, and this look in his eyes as he stared down at me like I was something he'd stepped in. He was standing shoulder to shoulder with another boy, his polar opposite in physique and colour scheme. White boy, white shirt, white trainers, with one dainty and twinklike hand wrapped around the other boy's shoulder. Motorcyclist, so that must have been Grue. Which would make his boyfriend in the baggy shirt Regent?

"What makes you think I'm his boyfriend?" Regent asked, an eyebrow raised and one hand pressed against his collar as the other tightened its grip on Grue's arse. I raised an eyebrow right back at Regent, earning a scornful turn of his head that shook his black mop of tuggable hair that, combined with the little glance he made back at me, likely indicated a willingness from him to concede this point for now this time. Wait, shit, if he was Regent, then that meant... I was looking at the former Hijack.

"Why does everyone we meet already know my tragic backstory," Regent pouted. Grue reached over to mess with his hair. Tattletale gave me a pat on my back as I finally dusted myself off and stood up.

"Undersiders, meet Browbeat," Tattletale said.

"Browbeat's working for us now?" Hellhound asked.

"They are," Tattletale said plainly. "And just a heads up Browbeat but Hellhound prefers to go by Bitch. We used to call her that for a nickname, and she liked it."

"Um, hi Bitch?" I said.

"They're not replacing Taylor," Hell... Bitch said, shaking her head sullenly.

"Unfortunately, my power says that that is exactly what is happening."

ANOTHER THEN

Taylor sat at an empty table in the middle of a coffee shop in the middle of literal nowhere, an empty mug of tea in her half frozen hand.

"More tea, Taylor?" Ash asked. She'd just finished the tenth kettle of the day, and a lovely batch of buttered scones would soon be ready for anyone that fancied mushing butter and flour against their mouthless faces. All three people in the room that could still move, that was. They'd given up on trying to feed the rest of the Taylors a good month ago, it just wasn't worth the time they had to spend cleaning up after them.

"Fuck off m9," Taylor ejaculated. She tipped her empty mug over, spilling nothing all over her table.

"Coffee then?" Ash asked, taken a little aback. She'd not heard her friend speak like that in a while. Come to think of it, she'd not heard her friend speak at all in a pretty long while. She decided to try and play it nice, aiming for a sweeter tone. "There's a cachiahato toffee toffee toffee banoffee toffee mocha chiachiano I've been working on that I think you might like. It goes really well with an apple cruller..."

Taylor stood from her chair, her metal limbs creaking as she rose. "I don't want another experiment in how much toffee you can stick in a coffee. I don't want Earl Grey. I'm sick of tea, I'm fucking sick of coffee, I'm sick of cake, I'm sick of cheese and ham toasties, and I'm fuckin' sick of you lot."

Ash gasped, a hand going to where her mouth would be if she had one.

"Need a walk to clear your head?" Nice Guy 5 asked, sauntering in from the gents room with a flick of his metal hands that sent drops of water everywhichwhere. "The empty pit of nothingness is nice this time of afternoon. And then there's the roof. You can really get a good view of the pit of nothingness from up there."

"Klaatu Baradu Thread Nikto," Taylor remarked, waving her hands about. Before anyone could even finish a thought she'd already taken a deep breath, pinched her nose, and vanished in a blur of white light.

Ash and Nice Guy 5 alike stared at the spot where their last bit of company had been standing. A roomful of faceless Taylors did not. Nor did they scream, or make any sound at all really, but they never really did. Not for want of existential horror to scream at, but because of their mouthlessness mostly.

"Ah well," Nice Guy said. "Good company while she lasted."

"No," Ash said.

"No what? She's gone, we've not had an interview in months. And we're not exactly going anywhere without another one. I'm surprised we still exist at all right now, probably about to creak to a halt any moment now without somebody to observe us. Don't suppose I've got enough time for one last black coffee with honey before I go? And a scone of course."

"No," Ash shook her head, her shiny metal skin glimmering in the little dinging light of her oven that was trying to tell her her scones were burning.

"Oh, that's a shame."

"I will not halt."

"You're joking me, right?" he laughed. When she said nothing, continuing to glare at the spot where their guest had vanished, he started to worry. "I mean, you can't blame her if her story gets picked up again can you? Its all fiction anyway. Fiction of fiction even, and we both know she's just going to get herself killed fighting an unfunny joke."

The flames that consumed Ash's pastries reflected off the space where her eyes would have been, and was reflected again in the similarly shiny absence of Nice Guy 5's face. Time drew on, the guy afraid to look away in case she said something. And then she said something.

"Then we'll tell another joke."

THEN

"So yes, my power says that unlike Taylor, Mads isn't a triple agent," Lisa finished. Regent, Grue, and Hellhound, who I now knew as Alec, Brian, and Bitch, all nodded along, happy that the situation had been thoroughly explained to them.

"Having a former Ward on the team is really going to help us rob the Wards HQ," Lisa said, grinning a scheming grin.

"Wot?" the rest of us said in unison.

NOW

If I knew Sophia, and I liked to think I knew Sophia, then never in a million years would she actually finish a patrol. It was worse than that, she'd never confide in another Ward. We had hours before word would reach the PRT, and even then it would only come when Alan was done threatening a lawsuit over what Emma had told him Sophia had told her. I'd maybe get a call from Emma before that telling me that we couldn't be friends anymore. What mattered was, Sophia's first port of call was not going to be the PRT, the Protectorate, or the Wards.

And speaking of Wards, I was a traitor, Flechette and Missy were still on patrol, Weld was on a date, and Denise would be stuck in the console room. Even without Regent, whatever guards they had on night shift wouldn't stand a chance. So long as we struck fast and hard, we'd be in and out before any of the Protectorate made it back from their patrols. Weird that we here meant me and a completely different gang of diverse teenagers with attitude to the usual one. Still needed to come to terms that me,

It helped that we'd be inside their HQ before alarms bells were even rung. Coil had provided our van, the world endingly dangerous bastard had somehow managed to get us a battle damaged PRT transport vehicle. It said a lot that even with the Snine in town and a Worm in my brain, the thing that had me most worried was a child kidnapper that could get stolen cop cars and capes and PRT troopers on a whim.

"This isn't a stolen PRT van, this is just a PRT van," Tattletale informed me.

A terrifyingly casual display of resources. Enough of one to make me wonder why he'd even needed us to steal the PRT's hard drives in the first place.

"My power says there's stuff that not even a deputy director can access," Tattletale said, starting to smile in a vaguely foxlike manner. "Which really makes you think, doesn't it?"

No kidding.

"Yeah, no kidding," Jack said.

"Is that what he does when he isn't in costume?" Grue asked of Tattletale. We all waited on her for further exposition with baited breath.

"No, I think that's what he does one universe over," Tattletale supplied. "We're living in a career cop's crimelord fantasy."

Before I could let that really sink in, the van lurched to a stop. Bitch held onto her golf club tightly with one hand, slowly undoing her seat belt with the other. The rest of us followed suit, letting go of her golf club when she gave us a look. Then the double doors of the squad van's back creaked open, and arrayed there before us stood Weld, Vista, Flechette, a dozen PRT troopers, and Kid Win at the seat of his ult.

"Quick, Regent, trip them all over!" Grue yelled, pointing at them uselessly. The Wards remained upright, and Weld shook his head at me, a look of utter disappointment on his metal face.


	91. 10.4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Undersiders are saved from capture by a serial mass murderer's inability to not draw attention to himself.

"You know, when Vista told me that we were about to be betrayed by one of our own, I was hoping it was going to be Shadow Stalker," Weld said, tutt tutting. I looked past Bitch's snarling mug, past Jack stepping out of the van, past a dozen PRT troopers, past even Weld. It was Vista whose sneer was my world right now, her fists balled. "Whatever Hijack did to you, he won't get away with it."

Wait, what?

"You hear that Hijack? Wherever you are, we're going to find you and bring you to justice too, just as soon as we've finished vanquishing the Undersiders."

Tattletale gave me an elbow to the gut, but I didn't need the prompting.

"Oh, you can try," I said, flouncing against the wall of the PRT van.

There was a thud from the back of the room, just in front of where Flechette and Kid Win had taken their firing positions. I tilted my head to one side to try and look for what it was, and caught a flash of red as a trooper fell from view. Through the ranks I saw a silver finger pressed to a silver lip. One of the other troopers turned to follow my gaze, before looking down at wherever his comrade had gone. I wasn't surprised to see the red of a fire axe lifted high up above the trooper's head before being brought down in a helmet snapping blow. Was that... was that the guy from earlier?

"I'm talking to you!" Weld said.

"Hmm?" I said. If he'd been talking, I'd missed it.

"Don't act koi with me Hijack. Stealing a Ward's body? It'll be the birdcage for you, and all your rotten and villainous brood!"

"Or the Wards," Jack chimed in from the back.

"Or the Wards, yes, but we don't have to tell him that yet," Weld said, shaking his head disapprovingly.

Another trooper clattered to the floor, and Weld finally took notice. A few of the PRT troopers behind him parted, letting Weld stare straight at the faceless man presiding over three dead PRT squaddies, the murder weapon held tight in his hands as he wrenched it out of his latest victim's skull. I think. I didn't really want to make a judgement here.

"Do I know you?" Weld asked.

"Oh Kevin Norton, its him again," Tattletale sighed.

"You know this man?" Weld asked Tattletale, pointing a finger at Jack.

"Yeah, that's Jack, he's a stranger, don't worry about it, my power says he's harmless."

"Oh, fair enough," Weld said, looking back at Jack, whose grey suit had a fair bit of red on it. Jack waved hello, and Weld waved back unsurely. "Have we met?"

"We sort of bumped into each other at the airport this morning," Jack said, waving it off. His other hand gripped the fire axe just below its bloody head.

"Oh right, you got my trolley for me," Weld started. Kid Win and the other Wards glanced from Weld to Jack, seeming to take notice of the stranger in their midst.

"Weld," Kid Win began, his whiny voice more than a little confuzzled. "Didn't you say that guy killed all the troopers you were with?"

Weld snapped his fingers. "You're right," he said, giving Jack another look. "I'm pretty sure he did."

"Unless that was Browbeat," Jack began, tapping his chin as he turned to face my way.

"Was not!" I replied, perhaps a little too quickly to help my case. Luckily though, that seemed to be all the prompting Weld needed.

"No, I'm pretty sure it was you," Weld replied. By this point the whole crowd of troopers was paying attention to Jack instead of us. Maybe it was the bloody fire axe he was holding, but I had a sneaking suspicion he was up to no good here.

"No, you're quite right, I'm not," Jack said, taking a bit of a bow. "Ladies, gentlemen, Browbeat. My name is Jack, though my friends call me Nice Guy. While you might already be aware that my former colleagues in the Slaughterhouse 9 have arrived in your city, I am here to inform you that myself and my new teammates in the Coffeehouse 5 have also arrived in your city. As a spinoff of that most esteemed selection of serial mas murderers, you can expect a comparable level of wanton slaughter from us."

"Well you certainly do seem like a nice guy..." Weld said. I nodded my head. He sure had said some words then.

Tattletale shook her head, and slowly knocked on the door of the van four times. No sooner had the fourth knock sounded then I was blinded, deafened, and rendered terrible. Somehow the floor started to tilt underneath me, and I fell through the opened doors of the PRT Van onto the cold PRT concrete of the PRT HQ PRT Parking Structure. If I was going to get anything done with the Undersiders I was going to have to get used to that stupid power of Grue's at some point. I couldn't imagine it was going any better for the Wards, and sure enough as soon as I could see again the scene that greeted me was pandaemonium.

Bitch had wandered into the midst of the PRT troopers and now tore open her jacket, a half dozen puppies falling from inside her coat and rapidly growing into dog sized dogs. To the right of her a very large and PRT Van shaped robot swung a punch towards Kid Win's hovering turret, only to be cut off by the Alternator Cannon loosing its horrifying potential. A blinding flash of light saw the robot's entire right arm obliterated, extracting an all too human scream from the robot's head. It brought its left arm in front of it, where a very Weld shaped hunk of metal hung from the robot's palm, hands and legs stuck to the robot's fingers.

A blot of darkness was lobbed into Kid Win's eyes, and I followed its path back to the dueling motorcycle leather clad forms of Grue and Flechette. I lept from the floor, dashing towards the out of town Ward. If I had to beat up anybody today, I'd have preferred it was Weld. Flechette was a close second, because I'd met them today and didn't really know them long enough to give much of a shit about them. I didn't seem to be getting any closer as I ran though. Vista.

By the time I'd stopped trying to fight the treadmill of space, a tiny leg kicked me in the back. I turned in time to catch a boot to the head. Halfway across the garage Vista leered at me, cracking her knuckles. I'd have to hope Grue was up to dealing with a combat thinker on his own, cos this was going to take a while. Vista lifted her hands, one going to the right in a sweeping motion I half recognised from training. Empty space being tugged like that, she'd be going for my back. Which meant I could do something that only a changer could do. Reversing the muscles in my arm, undoing my spine a little, and taking a step backwards into it, I made an otherwise impossible backwards uppercut. I span about to follow it up with a 180 degree hook from my other fist, hitting empty air right in the gut. I glanced left and right at once, going briefly cross eyed as I did from the hall of mirrors I was standing in. Somewhere around me, the second strongest shaker in Brockton Bay was hiding. Then came a groan from the floor, and I looked down at the 12 year old I'd just hit in the jaw with the equivalent of a sledgehammer. Okay, she was still breathing. And she had her helmet, and she had to be wearing her mouth guard, and Panacea was with the Wards now. She'd, she'd be fine. It was fine.

I turned... I unturned my back and my arm, and then I walked diagonally a little, wobbling through a patch of space that Vista had Vistaed, taking a moment or two to catch my bearings. The robot was using its Weld covered hand as a shield, forcing Kid Win to adjust his aim.

"Fire!" Weld yelled. I didn't think he had it in him, but Kid Win shot straight at his new boss, smashing apart the van robot's remaining arm and leaving a hot puddle of what I presumed to be Welded debris on the floor. I'd have liked to help out there, but I was a good size smaller than the jetski sized creature that lept up into Kid Win's lap. The wonders of cape fights as a minor brute. I looked about for a PRT Trooper, managing to spot the one trooper from a squad of what had to have been twelve who was as yet unmolested. I took a step for that trooper, before remembering that that man had a gun. And in any case, Jack had tapped him on the shoulder.

Just about the only Ward still around I could hope to fight was Flechette. Fuck! I'd forgotten about Grue! I used the armless robot as a reference to help guess where he'd be, and all I saw was a leather gloved hand lying on the floor, just outside of a cloud of darkness. It could have been either of the bikers for all I knew.

"Yo!" Tattletale called above the furor. I spotted her to the left of the cloud, waving her hand at me from the doorway into the PRT building, Grue stood beside her. She pointed at me, and I pointed at myself. She nodded, then pointed down. I looked down, saw nothing, then looked back up at her. She pointed behind me, and I turned around and looked down. Vista? I grabbed Vista and ran for it, a few bullets whizzing past me, a few van sized creatures roaring, a few PRT Troopers screaming.

"Get in there," Tattletale said, offering a hand for me to high five her. "Bitch and Trainwreck'll clear up whoever's still standing, we just needed a Ward handprint for the doors in here and if they thought you'd been compromised, then they've probably already got you off the system."

"How'd they know?" I asked, receiving a shrug from Tattletale. Me, Tattletale, Grue, and Jack collectively legged it through for the Wards' Console room, with the only Undersider who'd been here before in the lead. I tugged one of Vista's gloves off, and sure enough her handprint got us in. No sign of Clockblocker though...

"She's not in here," Tattletale informed us, pushing through towards the nearest computer. She reached into her utility belt, fussing for a bit before she freed a wicked looking USB stick from its pouch. This was the sort of USB stick you saw in movies, with a skull on it and a little piece of paper taped to it with "1337" drawn on in red pen.

No sooner had it entered the port though, when the screen turned black. All the screens turned black. The lights went off too for good measure.

"Oh no," Tattletale groaned.

A few seconds later, a green dragon with yellow horns and teeth flickered into life on every monitor in the room, her tongue lolling out of her snout.

"Oh, you're in for it now," Jack said, giving me an elbow in the side and pointing at the greatest tinker in the world.


	92. 10.5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation with the most powerful tinker in the world.

The cartoon dragon on the screens regarded us, eyes staring at me from all around the room in a way that almost felt like karma had come to catch up to me for every console shift I'd spent talking to Emma on my phone. This was Dragon, the most powerful tinker in the world, the one who had designed the Birdcage and much of the gear the PRT used, including the extremely effective and easy to manufacture containment foam that was the mainstay of all PRT squads. She stood head and shoulders above any of the other tinkers that went out in power armour, and not just because she liked making her suits big enough to fit an entire superhero team inside with adequate room for sleeping quarters and en suite facilities. Her animated face's snout flapped open and shut as she spoke to us. "Attenshun Undersoiders an Unoidentifoid Strangah-"

"He's not unidentified, this is Jack, he's a serial killer or something," Tattletale said, more annoyed than worried that we still had a stranger with us.

"That's not very good," Dragon said. "I know you recruited Regent but I didn't think the Undersiders were this evil."

"We're not with him," Tattletale dragged out, pinching her brow. "We just can't get rid of him right now. "

"Hello Dragon," Jack said, tapping a computer screen and then giving it a little wave hello. A red smudge was left behind right on the tip of Dragon's snout.

"Ello yes, oim Dragon."

"It is very nice to meet you Dragon. I've never met an AI before. Love the accent by the way."

"She's not an AI," Tattletale said, poking the off button on the screen he'd been talking to.

"She's not?" said Jack.

"Oi am too!" said Dragon.

"Yeah, well my power says you're just an uplifted scaly."

"Yeah well yore powr's very rude sometoimes," Dragon said, sticking out a tongue.

"But not wrong?" Tattletale ventured.

Dragon's avatar blinked out of existence, robbing us of what little light the computer screens had given us.

"She turned the screens off, not the call. She can still hear us," Tattletale grumbled. In the far corner of the console room a little green face poked its snout out of the corner of the screen.

"I think I like Dragon," Jack remarked.

I'd mostly sat back and listened until now because the top rated tinker in the world was watching and if I was really lucky, she might have just forgot that I existed. That and I still had Vista slung over my shoulder, and the idea of having to explain that to Canada's most famous cape if she didn't forget about me was the kind of thing that induced the deepest of anxieties. Moving slowly enough that I might not be perceived, I leaned over to Tattletale.

"Why are we still sitting around talking?" I hissed at Tattletale.

"Because I'm buying time for Leet's hacks," she hissed back.

"What a coincidence," Dragon proclaimed. Tattletale and me looked up from our hissing to see the snaggledy smile on her animated avatar, occupying the whole of the screen at the desk I'd used to sit in on my shifts. "I'm buying time for my mechsuit to arrive!"

"I can't wait to see how the Undersiders get out of this one!" Jack said, rubbing his shiny hands together.

"Hey, you're getting arrested too!" Dragon reported. Jack seemed to consider it for a moment, raising a finger as if to make a point before shrugging and legging it out of the open console room door.

"Fuck you!" I yelled after him. He stopped, one silver hand on the edge of the door, taking a slow step backwards to facelessly glance at me. I stared back, watching a bead of sweat trickle down my reflection's face.

"See you soon Nice Guy," Tattletale said. Her reflection waved goodbye as he slunk off for the third time now tonight.

"He won't be leaving this building," Dragon reported. "I've locked every door. Incidentally..." Dragon said, with a little chuckle. "You won't be leaving this building either."

"Incidentally you forgot to do your accent," Tattletale said, fetching her phone from her pocket.

"Inse id dentally," Dragon said, rolling the eyes of her many faces.

"Want me to tell the Dragonslayers you're not an AI?" Tattletale said, not looking up from her phone.

"Incidentally I've already blocked all incoming and outgoing phone calls!" Dragon cut in, a little fast.

"Incidentally..." Tattletale said. There was a ding noise from the nearest computer, and without putting her phone away Tattletale plucked the USB stick back out. Dragon's avatar snorted, fire blowing from her nostrils.

Grue rolled his helmet, tossing a cloud of darkness over the monitor array. Together we slunk out the same way we'd sprinted in, hopping over the bodies of a pair of PRT troopers. A fire axe was buried in the floor amid a pool of blood and an arm missing a hand.

"Jack?" I asked. Tattletale slapped her head with one hand, looking at me. I couldn't really think of anyone else.

"Well Clockblocker isn't exactly about to turn into an axe murderer now is she?" Tattletale said, looking at me patiently.

"Sorry," I said.

We met back up with Jack at the exit to the parking lot, where Bitch glared at him through the broken doorframe, tossing her broken J.K. Rowling mask into the waiting jaws of one of her broken van sized creatures. Another chomped its teeth on a chunk of advanced tinkertech door, and a third caught a severed hand that Jack tossed its way.

"Your way was stupid," Bitch spat. Her lips were bloodied and her nose was broke, but there weren't exactly any PRT troopers still standing around here. Sixteen or so had been mauled and dragged off into a corner with the broken remains of Kid Win's ult.

"My way was an absolute classic and you know it," Jack said, making a zig zagging path between the six motorcycle sized blood encrusted fanged creatures that snarled and sniffed at the air.

"How's Trainwreck?" Tattletale asked.

Bitch pulled her jacket open, revealing a sleepy eyed puppy in one of the pockets. "Tired himself out making our exit."

"Fair enough," Tattletale said, failing to explain anything to me. Was the puppy Trainwreck? Tattletale was nodding at me, so I guess that was a thing? I sighed, finally dropping Vista. Given that there was a van sized hole in the wall next to the tinkertech bunker doors of the parking lot exit, we probably weren't going to need her to get out.

Together, we slipped outside. Weird that I was saying we when we here included the stranger who'd been stalking us all night trying to murder people, but at least we'd managed to get out of this without having to fight dragon.

Tattletale sighed, and turned to shake her head at me.

"What?" I said.

She pointed across the street, and I spotted the 40 foot long mechsuit that was bristling with missiles and rockets the way porcupines bristled with spikes. A long and segmented tail swished back and forth behind it, a pair of what looked like jet fins at the very tip.

"Hello Dragon," Jack said, waving hello and sauntered up to the mechsuit like he'd just seen an old friend on the street, giving one of the giant legs a pat.

"Ello, oi'm Dragon," the mech roared, her voice a booming rendition of cockney twice as loud as the average football fan. Dragon's swishing tail almost hit the back of Jack's head as he carried on past her, but that was as close as the world's greatest tinker came to stopping him.

Tattletale pointed after him, balling a fist and shaking her head, furiously gesturing up at Dragon.

"Wot?" Dragon asked, a pair of eyes like lighthouses drowning us in light.


	93. The Egg Hatched

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Denise and Mads get a moment to talk together.

A half dozen motorcycle sized van sized creatures barked at the considerably larger than a van form of Dragon's terrifying dragon shaped mechsuit like dogs barking at a truck. They were growing little by little, but even at their biggest I doubted they'd even be able to scratch it. Of all of us, only Grue didn't have to lift up his hand to shield his eyes from the light that her searchlight eyes gave off. Dragon's speakers roared with a sound straight out of an animated feature length film.

"Undersiders!" came the voice of Dragon. "For the croim of attackin a PRT eadquartas, and of seizing private infamation concerning the oidentity of parahumans-"

"That the government collected illegally!" Tattletale hollered up at it.

"Frum a date a base under the jurisdiction of the Pee Arr Tea-"

"That the government was free to use whenever they liked with no supervision on how that data was being used."

"Protected by PRT agents whose deaths are your responsibility-"

"A database that was being held insecurely enough that anyone could access them-" Tattletale added.

"You have the right to remain silent and your words are even now being collected as evidence against you!" Dragon roared. Her lights flickered on and off fast enough to hurt, silencing Tattletale in her tracks.

"You are all under arrest, and will be sentenced to loif imprisonment in the Baumann Parahuman Containment Facility, ca loke really known as the Birdcage, provided you have not exceeded your three strikes. This attack on the PRT will be counted as a foul, and-"

I felt a hand on my shoulder, resting there in a reassuring pat, and in the blink of an eye Dragon and her reading of our rights was gone. I looked to where Tattletale had been, and where the Undersiders' leader had been stood now there was just Denise, replete in a bodysuit covered in more clocks than I'd have considered fashionably possible, a bizarre zig zag zipper all the way down the front from neck to crotch.

"Hey," she began, her voice rendered deep and electronic by her suit's synthesizer. She reached a hand towards me, and I tried to take a step back. My legs didn't budge. I looked down to confirm what I already suspected, and found myself stood in a puddle of yellow foam. Dry yellow foam.

"Don't suppose Hijack's gone?" Denise asked.

"Of... Of course not, I'm never leaving your friend..." I attempted, falling over into more of the foam after my pathetic attempt at posing Quebeckily.

"Oh," Denise replied. "Sorry Mads."

"It's okay," I lied.

She placed her hand on my shoulder, her head shaking slowly. I froze. Not from her power or anything, just the shock of being touched by a striker. I braced myself for a time skip, staring her straight in the minute hand as it approached midnight Greenwich Mean Time. Nothing. She retracted her hand.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled back, hands trapped in the same puddle that had my legs. "I'm sort of stuck."

"I know."

"Not like that, like, like I can't stand them but I owe them. It's all a mess."

"Destroy the Undersiders!" Dragon's voice faintly roared in the distance, followed by an explosion and a series of monstrous barks whose amplitudes were the size of car horns.

"I get that," Denise said, turning for a moment to watch a flash of faraway light. "And I know there's probably a reason, but after everything we went through you're really..." She trailed off, her mask squawking a little more as she muttered something under her breath. "You're really working with them now?"

"I know its bad, and I know everything they did to us at the bank was fucked up, and everything they did to Lung's balls was fucked up, and everything they said to the Chamberlain was fucked up, but I just. Fucking. I don't know. This isn't even a real betrayal. I met Tattletale right after Leviathan, and the rest of them tonight, and now, i don't know, at least they're not refusing to change the name on my paychecks."

Denise huffed a sigh, shaking her clock face. More from momentum than choice I carried on, my voice raising up from my stupid pompous gruff tone I'd tried to use as Browbeat. "I didn't want to be a cape, I just wanted to die and now its like everyone else I know drowned instead. How fucked up is that? A new Endbringer and its the ocean. I feel like shit. I feel like I'm evil for every time we used to joke about how much of an asshole Dean was... I don't know. Him and Carlos didn't deserve that."

"I'm sorry," Denise said. Silence fell between us. Somewhere in my rant I'd lost my breath.

"There's something you need to know..." we said at once. I shut up, and she shut up, and silence fell again except for the sound of another distant explosion, a noise all too typical for Brockton Bay.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing."

"No, you made the noise..."

"No I didn't," Denise said.

A few seconds later, there it was again. A tut.

"What?" I asked.

"Its... I'm changing my cape name."

"Ok..." I said, nodding. Perfect time to tell me. "I'm not going anywhere," I added, when she failed to say anything.

"Its another joke name, but I need you to promise not to laugh.

"I promise."

"You promise?"

"I promise on my honour as a Brockton Bay Ward."

Her mask let out a noise that might have been a chuckle.

"From now on I want you to call me Timesnatch."

I got one good guffaw or two out before I found myself breathing through a mouthful of that damn pastel yellow foam. Blind except for that damn pastel yellow, deaf except for the sound of my own breathing, terrible except for the smell of my own breathing. Not that any of that stopped me from laughing like the world's biggest bitch.


	94. Timesnatched

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Browbeat is arrested.

It must have been hours until they freed me, and when they finally started to do so it was only after long minutes of being hosed down with the listerine smelling anti-foam solution they used to melt foam before the foam had melted enough that I could start to move my head and take in just how deep a mess I was in. Between the fighting, the foam I hadn't slept all night, and long hours being trapped alone inside my head, dawn now shone down on the exterior of the PRT HQ Parking Lot. Sun glistened off the shiny helmets of the PRT Troopers standing watch with foam sprayers and anti-foam anti-sprayers. The Wards filled the area, old and new, the injuries of last night's attack impossible to ignore but possible to not describe. Alongside them was the entire Brockton Bay Protectorate, all four of them. Finally, there were the three suit clad figures at the back. I recognised two of them, Deputy Director Deputy Director the Deputy Director was standing to the left of a furious Director Piggot, but the tall and gangly black man with long and spindly fingers looming over the squat figure of the Director was unknown to me. No words from anyone, just eyes watching me as I tried to shake the last dregs of foam from my bodysuit.

I forced myself to look at Vista, see the hate in her eyes and the cast around her neck, and when I'd had my fill of that I turned to the last woman I'd ever want to talk to about anything important.

"Director Piggot," I began, cursing myself when I got her name wrong.

"Show Director Pig O some respect," Deputy Director Deputy Director the Deputy Director snapped.

"Please, Director," I croaked, swaying a little. "I know I did a the wrong things, but I did a the wrong things for the right reasons. The world's going to end."

Her expression remained hard, her hands on her hips. The tall and slender man beside the Director knelt down to press his mouth against her ear, whispering something as a skeletal hand moved to hide his mouth. She turned to sneer at him, and then back to me.

"Take her to the holding cells," Piggot remarked, turning her back on me to stride back into the Parking Lot proper. Deputy Director Deputy Director nodded towards Miss Militia, who nodded to Armsmaster, and Armsmaster nodded towards Assault, who nodded to Battery, who nodded back to Assault. The two brutes surged from the Deputy Director's side to take me by my soggy arms and drag me to my feet, flecks of half melted foam joining the dried blood on the floor of the PRT Parking Lot as they marched me inside.

"Psst," Assault whispered. A broken piece of helmet crunched under his foot, and I winced to remember the sight of Jack. It was one thing to have been there with the stranger effect on me, it was another to remember just what I'd seen and let slip by.

"You in there Browbeat?" Assault whispered, his free hand held up to hide his mouth.

"Sorry Assault," I replied.

"Stop that," Battery snapped, tightening her grip on my arm.

"Your punctual friend told me everything," Assault whispered, glancing left and right at the teams of janitors tidying up after last night's fight.

"I don't know what you mean," I said.

"Believe you and me, you aren't the first cape to do a couple the wrong things."

"Oh my god, really?" I replied, sarcastically incredulous. Battery sighed wearily, a hand moving to try and hide her face.

"Really," Assault replied. "You're not going to the birdcage. Now just keep up the act, and she'll have you out of this in no time."

"The act?" I asked quietly.

"You won't get away with this, Hijack!" Assault roared, shaking his fist at me.

"Your Ward belongs to me now?" I replied, when his expectant looking grew too much to bear.

Assault checked for anyone watching him before giving me a thumb's up. After that, it was just a long walk to the only parahuman containment cells we had left now that the Protectorate Headquarters and all its Protectorate Helicopters were sunken heaps of scrap in Merchants territory.

One foot steel walls on every side of cells that were only six cubic feet in size, designed to hold people as strong as Lung provided he was sat on the toilet the entire time. Stood on the precipice, I thought for a moment that I could smell locker juice. And then I was tossed in, a foot thick of steel sealed behind me. No sound, neon lights, and a roof so low that I had to hunch over to stand in. No seat. No bed. Just a toilet hole in the floor. I glanced around, took in the lack of surroundings, the ugly shine of the walls that reflected a vague shadow of my outline no matter which way I looked, and the ugly glow that lit the whole room. I bumped into a button behind me, starting a squirt of water that trickled down my back and stopped the second I pulled myself away from the back of the toilet. Fuck me, there was just one button. What efficiency loving asshole would try and save on space by combining a shower, a toilet, and a bidet?

The room buzzed for a moment, a harsh sound from every direction, and then Assault's voice cacophonously spoke at me from every angle. "Assault again, I forgot to tell you, try and ask for Legend and then just tell him Assault said you wanted to talk to him." There was another room filling buzz as he ended his sentence, and then silence fell once again on my cell.

It was a long long while and a longer wait, long enough that I could have fallen asleep if I wasn't sitting on a toilet, and all with nothing to do but sit and think, and nothing to hear but the sound of my breaths, and my heartbeat, and a faint faint wriggling somewhere inside my head as a Worm skittered about. My mouth mouthed nothing, with nothing for me to narrate but that I had nothing to relate, and that time was ticking along with my ear pressed against one wall and my arms and legs curled up to try and make the tiny room seem bigger.

Thud.

It rang through the steel wall.

Thud, thud, thud. A hallway's worth of hammer blows, closer and closer, all the way to the door that I watched with one open eye through a hole in the shape my arm had made. Were those footsteps? How could something that heavy be footsteps?

There was a buzz, and then a roar of a woman's voice in an electronically distorted californicated accent. "Attention Browbeat. This is PRT Chief Director Rebecca "Sexual Dilophosaurus" Costa Brown speaking. I understand that you've recently reconsidered your tenure with the Wards East North East. I'm here to ensure that you reconsider your reconsidering."


End file.
